It might get up to 80 degrees and I'm setting in my easy chair drinking coffee at 7 a.m. I am the lazy farmer

The week will be over before it has really started. The sun is shining at 7 a.m. and a real farmer would be out working by now.
But I am a lazy farmer who never really finishes anything and sits around bemoaning his lack of accomplishments.
It is a role that needs to be filled in the community...
My wife took the kid to the beach, it was supposed to be me going to the beach, but it didn't rain. She left me with a crockpot of pork chops.
I had a feast last night.
This morning I popped on in the skillet and fried a couple eggs.
I was in a big hurry as I did not have the will power to drag myself out of bed and lay there staring at the ceiling and thinking about all the things I wasn't getting done. Then I thought about selling chicken feed, and then about building round speaker enclosures out of huge wooden Ikea serving bowls and then if I bribed the nephew, would he mow the lawn, and then wondered if I would ever get that Robbe-Grillet novel finished and then who on the list I should plant for next and then I thought about buying a truck and if anyone would ever give me 1.2 million dollars and what I would do if I found a coin on the beach and it was one of those magic ones and I'd get three wishes and about the foolishness of that fisherman who wished for a sausage and then I though about pigs and pig feed and for some reason, my dad and his story about the neighbor who saw a flying saucer, and then I worried about my dad and then wandered back to sausages and decided I'd have a porkchop for breakfast and then that got me thinking about Gus the pig who died and then I thought about .17 rifles which were on sale at BiMart and that got me thinking about fishing and I decided if I got my butt out of bed I could run down to the river to "Clean out the grain drill," and go fishing for an hour before the fellow shows up who is spreading fertilizer for us.
But then it was 7:15 a.m. and too late to do anything.
I made eggs but I was in a hurry and didn't get the porkchop warmed up to "piping hot." Not that it was bad, but the egg was a little runny and there was some goupy stuff from the crockpot cooking all over the pork chop and I clicked on the link to Hippo On the Lawn... I got up and put the pork chop in the microwave....
So it is now a little later and I've only time for two cups of coffee vs my usual five...
Have a nice day...

The excitement that is my life

I spent Saturday trying to get things together to make feed. I need to raise some funds. That means an a on craigslist and feed to sell.
I bought a very old fertilizer box from a neighbor. As usual, I got carried away listening to interesting stories and forgot to closely look at the box. I mean I saw it run..... 25 years ago...
It is powered by a single cylinder gas engine of about the same age as myself.
My chicken friend went with me. He did not seem to be all that impressed. After a half hour attempting to get it to start he gave up and went home.
I succeeded after taking the magneto apart and applying liberal amounts of de-oxit to surfaces that should conduct electricity.
It it just a touch low on the horsepower and it has a 4" unloading auger. It is painfully slow.
No feed was actually ground on Saturday...
Sunday the daughter and I attended church. I forgot to comb by hair. A person behind me patted down my cowlick for me. I was worried they might rub the bald spot but decorum was shown.
In the afternoon we built a hay fort over which we flew the Bonnie Blue flag and yelled (quietly) taunts at the blue belly devils at fort Stinky-Bottom across the machinery lot.
We failed to get a response and sent out a scouting mission to capture artillery.

I found an ancient goose scaring gun in the barn. Which led to a hunt for full propane bottles and then a half hour hour of me obsessing over the firing mechanism, followed by a large and somewhat startling explosion. Followed by much experimenting on aiming the gun at the neighbor's shed in order to get the perfect echo, followed by some protests from the Presidential staff who apparently was somewhat started by the unexpected bombardment.
Apparently the gun is louder from the front and side than it is from the rear. Also, if you are not expecting loud explosions outside the house it can be a bit unsettling. Hmmmm, didn't think of that....

Do not buy a Dell B1265DFW printer/scanner laser printer if you are going to print with anything but USB

The Dell B1265DFW seems like a good deal but a good deal is not a good deal if you can't use what you bought.
The is the 21st century. Computers are not new. There is no reason in the world that you can not buy a printer, pop in the installation CD, follow basic instructions, and have the item work.
The B1265DFW works hooked up to USB but I could never get the network features to work. It has the Dell printer management center software which is a total joke. It doesn't find the printer, it doesn't help you print, it doesn't actually have any help features implemented.
My wife bought this printer at Staples. She went to buy ink for our Epson printer and saw that you could buy a laser printer for the same price as it cost to buy an ink cartridge kit. It also had "air-print" which makes up for the total failure of Apple to make it easy to print from early iPhones and iPads.
The printer also shows up as a stand-alone printer under the airport tab, however, when you get the printer to show up you still can't get it to "resume printing."
There is nothing in the trouble shooting and the only comments online are basically saying that the printer doesn't work very well.
My advice is that if you find this through a search engine because you are having problems setting up your new Dell B1265DFW then just give up and return it to where you bought it. Solves a lot of anger management issues.
I will not be buying anything Dell after this experience. Insanity, this is 2014, why can't you just plug and play? It is not like it has any new technology, just a cheap plastic printer with poorly implemented features that you probably won't use even if you could get it to network...
Just my humble opinion...

My daily devotional

Family Devotions are difficult for me. I'm just not the well disciplined and organized father figure type. I also never know what to read. The Old Testament is full of death and dismemberment and the New Testament has some great stuff like the whole water into wine deal and loaves and fishes, but what was that kid thinking by not bringing any cookies? Bread and fish? Could have at least brought along a fruit roll-up...
And then I start going off on weird stuff like the importance of cultural mythology and my irritation that  the strict Biblicists focus on an absolutely historically accurate Bible and miss all the great object lesson of the Old Testament.
Take the Tower of Babel for instance, the doubters pass it off as a myth explaining the differences of languages, and the Biblicists keep looking for the tower, and I say.... It is a really important story in an age where we put all our faith in technology and information processing and go off on analogies towards the internet and the Titanic and mankind thinking we are our own gods and how we all get knocked down to size from time to time, and then i see the kid's eyes glaze over...
But I digress...
My daughter and I were reading Proverbs last month. And I missed several great verses which could be misappropriated. Sort of like, "Let him that stole steal, no more working with his hands," Ephesians 4:28.
She has a new Bible app on her iPhone that lets her search for scriptures. Of course I had her look up the phrase "pisseth against the wall," and much hilarity ensued.
And that is the real problem I have as a father. My mental age is stuck around grade 7.
When I was a lad by Uncle expounded the scriptures to me. I teach my child and nephews silly Bible jokes and stupid songs, As in, "at the bar/ at the bar/ where I smoked my first cigar/ and the billows of smoke rolled away/ it was there by chance that I tore my Sunday pants/and now I have to wear them every day.
So I was somewhat ashamed that it took Gorges to remind me of an important couple verses which I skimmed right over.
My thoughts for today came be summed up by Proverbs 31:6-7

Thanks Gorges... 

I'm afraid when this voyage is over the Admiral is going to be a little dry...

I'm moving to Florida

You know it is the little things that really do you in.
The constant rain.
Not getting your work done because you have too many projects to know where to start.
Because you feel like a failure for not having the heart to fire your worthless employee...
Because you had to stick your father in a rest home
And...
Because you are tired of working on junk. Previous century farm equipment and you farm a swamp and you just can't pull off the, "we farm with good older equipment on rich bottom land" sort of lie any longer.
Because the land rent went way up.
Because you spent all your money on feed but don't have any feed customers because you never answer your phone.
Because you don't have the kitchen put together and nothing you measure fits where it was supposed to fit.
Because you are getting old and every bone in your body hurts.
And because even though you put concrete blocks and gravel under your grain tank, you should not have put that last couple tonnes of peas in there because it was not bolted to a concrete slab...

There is a shovel sitting there if anyone feels energetic this morning, also would help if you would bring your own garbage can. I think it will take a couple. There is something like 12 ton of peas in that bin.
Perhaps my chicken friend will come over and fix it. He has lots of energy.
I think I will give all my farm equipment to my brother and move to Florida. Beach access 12 is calling...

If all your friends jumped off a cliff would you do it too?

I was in favor of the Bundy Revolt from day one. I am completely tired of the purple grape logos on everything in Oregon. It kind of annoys me when my wife introduces me to people in Portland and they ask about my vineyard. I hate the new sidewalks in Amity. I am mildly annoyed by the Blue Goat and I don't like people who have more money than I.
So I was pretty happy when I heard Al Bundy was taking it to the streets. I didn't really understand why he was doing it in Nevada but my attention span is not long enough to make it though a whole news broadcast anyway.

I was really worried Kelly Bundy might need a little comforting. I'd volunteer for that job but I doubt the lovely and gracious Mrs. Shephard would approve. Unless I could convince her it was for charity work. I doubt that would even work.
But then I realized that Kelly no longer looks the same as she did a couple years decade or so, ago...

Then I discovered it was not Al Bundy revolting because of a beer tax but an old dude by the name of Cliven Bundy who was revolting about a cow tax.
Of course the authorities were over-reacting. If Al Bundy revolts over beer taxes than everybody will revolt over taxes. Yup...25 years later another Bundy jumps off the same cliff! This time over cows, who would have thunk! See what violence on TV does for you?
So anyway....
The slippery slope theory is pretty much official US policy.
It is often used to justify excesses in regulation. If one kid drowns in a five gallon plastic bucket then every kid needs to be protected from five gallon buckets.
It was kind of amazing to see the support Mr. Bundy gained in his dispute with the BLM.
Here is a good quote that really gives us an understanding of the somewhat benign oppression we live under.
This is from a superintendent of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area who had issues with Mr. B in the past,
"“He calls himself a patriot, and says he loves America,” Mr. O’Neill said. “And yet he says he won’t follow any federal laws. You just can’t let this go by, or everybody is going to be like, ‘If Bundy can break the law, why can’t I?"
In the aftermath of this little crisis I keep looking for the other shoe to drop.
How will the like-minded "accidental" conspiracy of correct thinking folks, (people from Portland and your neighbor with the Obama yard sign and anyone in the news or education business) spin this story.
The way I see it and the way people I sell hay to see it, is Bundy was making a statement against the over-reach of Federal regulations and land grabbing. It was the same sort of protest as not paying a tax on the tea. I don't see it as stealing my money because I don't see it as my land. I'm not part of the collective. I don't own it. I can't pick up a rock or a turtle or a arrowhead or a hundred year old beer can and bring it home. I have to have a permit to set foot on it. It ain't mine. The Federal gubment is not me. If it were me then I would have been asked if I wanted to torture crazy Islamic people or spend a decade not winning a war and enriching horrible people.
But, I digress...
I keep watching for the one step forward two-steps back thing, (or is it two steps forward one step back)
Big event, lots of noise, public back down, respectable waiting period, quietly moving back in...and old Mr. Bundy is toast...
We are now seeing the "marginalization" of Mr. Bundy. First he was ignored, then he won and couldn't be ignored, now it is blame the victim time or defamation of character time. Let the guy talk and he will say something we can use against him time.
The news media is all over the Cliven Bundy racist theme. They already believed that because he was a White Christian, Rural Person, with a Southernish accent.
Of course what he said is what everybody suspects but will not say in public. You can see it with white "lower income" people all around us. They get just enough money from the government to live without working and then they take drugs, steal, screw, engage in illegal activity, but to quote the Johnny Cash song, "They Never Picked Cotton."
Now standing up and saying, "The N.... would have been better off under s......" is blasphemy in the new world order. It is funny to say to get people angry in an argument with the local democrat but it is an overstatement that is not really true. Cliven Bundy and a whole host of supporters were willing to chose arrest, death, and now IRS audits, rather than live in Slavery to the US gubment/BLM.  I think that what he wanted to do is compare the Slavery the N.... is living in today with the actual Slavery they came out of. But, that is a sort of philosophical argument that you can argue over beer (not wine) and  you can't make that sort of statement in public if you are White. It violates the undeniable virtue of the oppressed. You can't even say it if your are black. (I wonder if that sort of talk is what really got MLK shot.)

Important points that Lar larson missed when he traced the range law back to pre-statehood and decided he was very very clever by ignoring the point of the whole episode.
-The supporters of Cliven Bundy were standing against excessive taxation.  The over-reach of the Federal Government. Against issues like abuse of imminent domain, user fees which are collected to improve things and then are actually used to keep you out of whatever you were paying to use.
-Excessive Force by the Feds against an everyday Bozo. Cliven could have been arrested when he went to town for milk. (if there was authority to arrest him) A lien could have been placed on his cows and any money from the sale of cows would go to the BLM. This is done all the time with bill collection so I don't understand why that was not an option.
Machine guns and Military force is pretty insane. You don't see pictures of the BLM using this kind of force against drug operations on BLM land.
-The rather terrifying fact that a significant number of people no longer see our government as legitimate. (perhaps I'm not saying it correctly) The US gubment has ruled by the consent of the US people. Taking up guns to prevent the Feds from taking cows is revoking that consent. You can see it all though our culture. People are avoiding taxes, posting photos of cops beating people up, stocking up on ammunition, not voting, and so on.
The deal was, the gubment won't oppress the American people and we won't revolt. That is why the first and second amendments are so important. The problem is that no one in the gubment understands this and they just add more oppression to attempt to get more control and they get more and more out of touch with the people.
So.. who knows what will happen.
There is no leadership in the country. You can see it on the local level and it goes on up. There are No church leaders, no real community leaders, no national leaders. There is no person in leadership anywhere who has any integrity. Everyone is on their own...

Rain and peas

This Global Warming thing is really getting to me. I have decided to stop eating beans. If cow flatulence is a problem, then what about farmer flatulence?
I've been rained out on the planting. But, I planted anyway. This was a bad idea. Planting into muddy not dead material usually ends in failure. Well, not failure, partial failure which is almost worse that total failure.
But, the peas are planted.

In other news, the alfalfa, peas, and oats combo that I planted earlier is growing. This may be because I said 10-32 instead of 10-34 when I asked my little helper to get fertilizer for me. He just heard the "32" and got me 32 solution instead of 10-34. The tank already had 10-34 in it which is green. This colored the new fertilizer and I didn't figure out I was putting on 32 percent instead of 10 percent. So it all has a pretty good boost of nitrogen to get started. (NPK) So far it is working quite well.

And then Orin came to visit. Had a nice chat with Orin. My brother ordered him some parts for his 2-135. Orin got a chance to see how things used to be done...

The Stars don't care

My wife bought me a CD last year I think. Anyway, songs by James Low Western Project appeared magically in my computer, along with the James Bell album I actually bought and a Vern Gosden album I also have no recollection of purchasing. Perhaps iTunes is just messing with my head by randomly sending me music, I have no idea.
So I've been listening to a combination of Vintage Soul music, 90's country western, Hipster country western (didn't even know that was a genre) and one track by the Humans (late 70's surf-punk) No wonder I get confused. Conflicting musical styles on iTunes must lead to cognitive dissonance or at least mild flatulence. I have no idea what those terms mean I just like big words.
Anyway, the stars don't care, they shine on Texas, Portland, and Paris and our petty little lives don't affect the winds of fate. Really needed to hear that repeated to me 50 times this afternoon but my hands were greasy and I didn't want to mess up the track pad on the old iBook, plus if I bump it then I lose my internet connection and what if I want to access porn the Great Plains website in the shop?

Rain and work in the shop

Today it rained.
I am like three miles from home. If I would not have worked on the G1355 until noon yesterday I would have been planting at home.
It is sometime interesting to note that I have planted these same fields several times over the past decade.
Yesterday I found a screwdriver I lost several years ago. If you plant screw drivers they don't really seem to germinate well.

It is not in perfect shape but I put it back in the toolbox.

I replanted in the first field I planted this year. I no-tilled oats and then the farmer planted clover on top with his drill. The clover actually did a little better in the wet spots than the oats. You could see any low spots, they were bare. I am somewhat amazed at the field. When he first rented it the field had been plowed in circles for years. It was low in the middle and corners and high on the sides. I think they put quite a bit of lime on the field also. It was also amazingly clean for being planted in January, which would be before a lot of the broadleaf weeds would sprout.

So I have the G1355 running. I see from the photo I forgot to put the cover back on the side of the cab. I see that my little helper didn't notice it either.

Today I put the White 2-135 in the shop and got ready to swap engines. I removed the hood, radiator, turbo, and was working on the manifolds but got hungry and quit for supper. The hard part will be putting it all onto the new engine. It is a hercules military truck engine and I have to change the timing gear, turbo, injectors, manifold, and waterpump. Have to drill and tap a hole in the head for the water pump.
I'm more worried about getting the timing gear changed. Hope I don't have to mess with the cam. Wish I could just hire someone to do it.

I've been busy

I've been attempting to post but I've been busy. Trying to figure out taxes, should be helping my wife put the kitchen back together, need to make the house safe for my father to live with us, should be spreading fertilizer, have ground to work, need to make feed, need to put 30 one ton bags of peas into a large bin, and I'm planting for the neighbors.
I need to plant as it is income and if I say no to anyone then I lose the job.
The planting is not going as fast as it should. Bearings keep failing. It is unbelievable how terrible Chinese bearings can be. The no-till drill is a fairly high stress machine. Instead of v-opener bearings failing at about the time the discs are worn out, they are failing randomly. The American or Japan made press wheel bearings lasted at least 6,000 acres possibly 8,000 acres, (they outlasted the wheel mounted acre counter) the Chinese replacements have barely made 2,000 acres.
Wheel bearings are worse, the bearings I installed when I broke an axle last month are starting to fail.
There is not much of a difference in cost between Chinese junk (pun) and bearings made anywhere else. However, there is no choice, you can't get American bearings. At this point I'd take Indian bearings, they have done wonders with the Lister clones. Why don't Mexicans make bearings? A least that would be closer.
I wonder if the problem with China is not so much the Chinese, it is the whorish American companies that are bringing in poor quality products for pennies less than it would cost to make new products here. The company that imports the products could control the quality. Of course the Chinese are also buying up American name brands and then cranking out lessor quality products.
Of course my employee has some sort of personal problems which prevent him from coming to work. It could be serious, I didn't actually read the whole text. Crisis will happen and it would not be a problem but for the fact that he also didn't come to work all winter when he could come to work.
I need someone to come in and "guest manage" the farm to get us all back on track. Someone who could just send me off somewhere to work and then I would not have to make decisions or deal with people who are self-imposed "victims."
I'd put my nephews and daughter to work but I'm not home to supervise.
I'd put MuddyValley to work but then he would find out the vast sums of money I make and raise my rent.
Now I'm going to take may daughter to the bus.
Man, I have a lot of built up frustration from listening to that idiot Lars and other talk shows, but not enough time to write about it.

Grandpa gets the wrong chair

Grandpa (my Dad) slipped a cog somewhere around May of last year. He forgets what to do. It is a bit deceiving as a lot of the time you can carry on a conversation with him and he seems ok.
But, he is not ok.
Yesterday I needed to check on him at 5:30 p.m.
My wife took daughter and her friend to trampoline land and the mall for birthday celebration. (They had chocolate cheesecake and I only got one small bite.)
My brother and family had school convention.
Wife checked on Dad before she left. Uncle checked on him before he went to the fireman's dinner. (even though he is not a fireman, probably donated something)
That left Grandpa alone for an hour and a half. He had Andy Griffith on the TV and he should have been fine.
However, with all the excitement of people coming to check on him I guess he decided that it must be time to go to the bathroom.
The bathroom is always the "default" for Grandpa. If all else fails and he doesn't know what to do then he just goes to the bathroom. This works out pretty well because he then forgets what to do in the bathroom and just sets there until you come get him. This is good because he doesn't wander around the house.
Well.... this one time he figures out that he has finished with the bathroom and should go back to his chair and set down.
He gets the wrong chair.
This chair has a pile of stuff on it and he can't set down completely. Plus the electric chair remote just doesn't seem to work. Won't move the chair and it won't change channels on the TV. (Cause it is the wrong chair and it never does work with the TV no matter how many times he pushes the button)
So... he is hanging on to his walker for dear life and my sister-in-law arrives home first.
She probably thinks we abandoned Dad.
It is sort of true.
I couldn't get the pickup to start, I called three people and no one was home. I went back to planting. I finished the field. I'm fairly happy.
I'm pretty sure Dad has almost completely forgotten that his chair wouldn't work yesterday. Life goes on...
In other news, My wife got daughter a $50 GoodWill gift card for daughter's 13th birthday. It was pretty funny. My daughter does not like GoodWill...
"Think how many things you can get for 99 cents," exclaimed my wife.
I bought my daughter bulk white legos and a furry pillow with LED lights that randomly flash. Then I gave her and her friend a rambling lecture about the human brain needed to make patterns out of random events and a story about an elderly lady who became addicted to gambling after taking anti- seizure medication and then offered to play them banjo music.
They are no longer in the living room.
We are now debating the merits of going to Church this morning...

My truck keeps dying

I was supposed to come home and check on Grandpa today at 5:30. But my pickup wouldn't start and there was nobody to give me a ride.
I was planting oats for my neighbor and was not quite in walking distance. The wrong side of town.
I figured Grampa has been on his own before and he will be ok, so I went back to planting. I think the starter has died on my pickup. This is a brand new starter. Probably made in China.
The last time it died was in the parking lot at Dad's Market in Amity.
I had let the truck roll backward into the middle of the parking lot. Then the starter failed.
I was underneath it removing the starter when a local winery owner came by.
Hey "Buddy" he says.
Hi "Dave" says I.
Having problems, says he.
"Yup," says I
What's wrong," says he.
Starter quit, says I.
"Got another one in the back of your pickup?" says he. (Making reference the fact that I'm carrying a welder, aircompressor, vacuum cleaner, and a huge number of other important items in the back of the truck.
"Thats one thing I don't have," says I.
And he walks off....
Could have offered me package of box wine and a long tube so I wouldn't have had get out from under the truck.
I planted 50 acres today and still had time to break down three times. I suppose it was a good day.

An interesting link about water rights and the way gubment works

Click here

In other news-
I overslept... I planted 25 acres after 6:30 last night. That is doing pretty well. I got to listen to Ground Zero which is pretty depressing.
Then this morning I realized I have one more month before I am officially out of money. It is not too bad because money starts back up in June.
Then I checked the mail and I had a whole string of announcements from Western Mennonite. Each of them has a little Bible Verse or tender Christian saying at the bottom. What a wonderful place for your child. They show the love of God with each electronic communication...
As time passes my attitude has sort of settled. There has been no explanation or training as to school discipline policies. A couple teachers told me they asked for training or clarification of policy and received only broad generic guidelines. Meaning there still is no written policy on acceptable discipline.. Meaning, they just wanted to get rid of my wife.

And so...

I have a medium dislike for each self important board member and some what stronger feelings about those in administration. A certain contempt for parents who will not get together and demand the education they want for their kids, and I have felt quite free to express my feelings to anyone who asks my opinion of the school.
Quite a few people ask my opinion as they know my wife was a teacher at the school for the past 13 or 14 years and my child attends the school.
If I could just put my experience into a short concise statement, without having to get into the details. But it is the details that are important. That and the utter silence that has come from anyone with any authority at the school or school board.
I suppose this is the definition of the term, "you can't fight city hall."

It is a beautiful day and I need to go to work

Yesterday I planted 10 acres.
I having my usual trouble getting stuff done.
I should be planting for my neighbor. I told him I'd be there today.
I have planting to do at home. I have 20 acres of peas to plant, 30 acres of Flax, various fescue fields that need to be replanted, and some oats. Most fields have wet spots which I must go around.
I attempted to plant alfalfa yesterday.
The plan was to no-till 8lbs alfalfa and 75lbs peas/oats mix into wheat stubble. It is right on the irrigation line so there is a possibility that I will be able to water it this summer. Then I was going to roll it down and plant another 10lbs of alfalfa going a different direction. Sort of a shotgun approach where if you put enough alfalfa seed down some will actually grow.
Of course the other tractor was not ready, the roller needed to be greased, people came after hay, things went wrong-whatever...
My friend H. Sanders came over and made his own chicken feed. He also brought me a brisket sandwich from Jacks BBQ. Jack has really good BBQ. It is worth stopping and sitting on the tailgate and having lunch for a brisket sandwich from Jack's.
Somehow I have to get the 20 acres of peas done and I need to get moved to the other side of town and start planting oats. But I also have to take off for my daughter's birthday party this evening.
I guess I better get to work.
You know, if someone would give me 1.2 million dollars I would not need to work and I could post photos of corn plants on this blog all day long.

Thinking about planting corn but I have no photos of corn

I need to call Ed Winkle but i lost his phone number. I suppose i could email him. But, it is easier to complain about it here and actually do nothing.
A neighbor called with 100 acres of corn that he wants to no-till. I use the term neighbor loosely. He is a day's journey by horse or a good hour at 18 mph on the M670 Super.
I really need to do something to the Corn planter.

We have a White 5100 with White frame mounted no-till openers. I've added Turbo-till coulters off of a great plains no-till caddy for the fertilizer. I used the Yetter style fertilizer injectors with a John Blue squeeze pump. My goal is 2" down and 2" over.
I am also applying six gallons of 10-34 right in the row though modified keeton seed firmers.
I need to figured out if I should try to find row cleaners that mount to the White no-till coulters or try and do a row unit mounted row cleaner, or should I do a unit row cleaner and no-till coulter?
I've been looking at the Martin catalogue and am now confused.
I'd like to do the whole Nu-till system. I can't afford it all. It would almost be cheaper to find a White 6100 with all the stuff installed!
We have single wheels in the back so it is hard to add closing wheels. I do have a funny Shaeffert closing wheel which sort of works and we have drag chains.
I'm kind of thinking about pulling it which the MM G1355 if it is cold weather.
I'm going to be planting into annual ryegrass sod following silage chopping. I think it will probably be a little on the damp side.
The system we have will slice right into that sort of conditions and may work perfectly. I planted under similar conditions a couple years ago and it turned out really good. Then I planted into ground that had been worked wet and was packed and cloddy. It did not work well.
I have never felt so much stress in the spring before. I have close to 1000 acres of hay that I have committed to stack, Might have couple hundred acres of silage to chop, have at least 200 acres of my own hay, don't even know how much straw I'm stacking for the neighbors, but I have 400 acres to bale myself.
I'm going to have to find a full time helper...
The one bright spot is that now that I've spend $10,000 on grain, all my feed customers have left me. Other than my friend who has collected 3,000 chickens...

I buy new tools

I'm sure you all clicked on that because you thought it said "nude," and now that you see pictures of tools you will all just click through.

I bought a vintage 1/2" drive SK brand socket set on eBay. That was not what I was looking for. I was trying to buy a boxend offset wrench that had 1/2" on one end and 9/16" on the other. These are the two sizes that I use frequently to adjust the baler knotter.
I've had several of these wrenches and I frequently loose them. I suspect there are SK wrench trees sprouting in people's fields all over the neighborhood.
FleaBay is an interesting place to buy tools. Brands like SK or Craftsman are bargains in comparison to Proto or Matco. Older brands like Indestructo are also excellent buys.
Real mechanics like to buy their tools from the Proto van and pay lots of money for them. However, SK and Craftsman are good quality tools with Lifetime replacement. I always look for those two brands at garage sales and thrift stores. If you get a bad socket you can take it to a distributer and they will give you a new one.
I bid on two sets and got them both. I really didn't need two 1/2" drive socket sets. I will never use a 1/2" drive speed handle or a 1/2" drive sparkplug wrench.
However, I really like the breaker bar that can be used as a drive extension.
I like tools.
Perhaps I will next post a photo of my toolbox which my daughter organized for me.

I am forced to work and not allowed to be lazy

My chicken farmer friend (Who we shall refer to as Harlan Sanders or HS) has been helping me. He shows up at 7:30 a.m. and demands I go to work.
This is seriously cutting into my blogging and coffee drinking time.
And now I have to go to work or he will be peeking in the sliding door and tapping gently on the glass.
Yesterday the Uncle left for the morning and I was taking care of the shop and store.  Several people came at once. HS took the fellow's worker out to the shop and started making up the hydraulic hose order. Then the corn seed arrived by truck and HS got the forklift and unloaded the truck, then he discussed farming with the fellow who came to visit, while I lifted something for my wife. Then he went and did something else important because I heard the forklift zooming around and then came and helped me move my wife table saw to where she is working.
It was nice.
It is hard to a lazy farmer when you are feeling enthusiastic.