Planting wheat and spending four hours to make a $14 part

I have been no-till planting for the last couple weeks. This is pretty much going to save my personal little farming career for this year. Today, I will hopefully hit 300 acres.

No-tilling peas into dead fescue sod for covercrop. It is a little bit on the late side for our area but it is actually still pretty warm so I suspect it will work.

 

The income will go for $5,000 in tires, $2500 in new openers, $300 in bearings, $350 for new down pressure springs, $500 for a Novatel Smart6T GPS antenna with tilt that came from a sketchy website in Ukraine.

The no-till drill (Great Plains 1500 with CPH) is a fairly high maintenance item. I did price a new drill figuring if I got a new drill and actually promoted my no-till planting I could do 500 acres a year and avoid much of the fall chores. Looks like $60,000 for a 15ft no till drill.

I thought I was done for this year and was on my way to move the drill home when a neighbor called me to see if I wanted to do another 60 acres. I was going to decline as one of the cast iron brackets that hold the down pressure spring guides had broken and was about to fail. I had ordered a new $14 part but I didn't ask for overnight shipping as I had no faith the dealer would actually order the part in a timely manner regardless.

Of course the part broke after 10 acres.

I spent yesterday morning building a $14 part. This was good as I was not listening to the radio...

 

I haven't been doing a lot of serious no-till. When I do have to use down pressure to cut in to hard sod things start breaking. The down pressure springs and spring guides are suddenly wearing out. As you can see from the picture one of the springs has broken. 

 

The spring guide/holder broke and I lost the broken part. I had to make a new one. If you look at the above picture you can see what it is supposed to look like. It only has to last a week.

 

Yesterday was the day after.... Or the day nutty white women saved Oregon from fascism...

I have come to see the voters as the Non Playing Characters in a video game, like the Sims in SimCity. They operate on a weird algorithm where weird variables cause them to riot or kill themselves or vote for insanity.

In Oregon, we have a Democrat supermajority which passes tax after tax, gives their friend's NGO political favors and big dollars, taxes innertubes and kiddie boats, builds endless roundabouts, but can't do bridge repair, or keep highway 101 from sliding into the Ocean. But, they do hate Data Centers (support Eminent Domain), hate former Democrat Donald Trump, and believe the woman's right to kill their babies is sacrosanct.

We actually had a voter initiative to put the idiot governor's last tax declaration up for a vote.

But, the voters in Oregon, when confronted with the choice of possibly the worst Governor since Neil Goldsmidt was banging the babysitter, and a liberal Republican, absolutely doubled down on their ideology and superstition. 

Honestly, Christine Drazan is a 1990's Democrat who was never going to stop you from killing your UNBORN baby, and who was lax enough on gun confiscation as to alienate half her base during the last election, and who would be limited by the supermajority to a symbolic veto attempt on tax increases and adopting Mao's Little Red Book as the official book of Oregon, and Trump didn't campaign for her.

But liberalism is a mental disorder and the sims retreated to their ideology and jingoism. "Dragon Drazon, MAGA, anti-reproductive rights..."

I do hope they are all quite excited that they were able to so easily defeat Fascism in one day. Obviously they are doubling down on that, because the party of "love=love" really does hate you for your thought crimes.