I am not as smart as I thought I once was

So I got this old telephone given to me. Somewhere I've got another one or two. I suppose the kids left them in the lawn as I let them play with them at some point.
But I am pretty sure I could hook them together to form my own telephone network.
Hand crank phone generators are fairly cheap on eBay. I've seen them from time to time at yard sales. Plus, you can do very entertaining shocking pranks on people.
Anyway, I found this book. (Click Here)
I just can't seem to concentrate on the schematics.
Perhaps I am old.
Today dad feel asleep while entering something in his computer database. He filled the entire memory up with the letter "e," sort of locked everything up and I had to restart for him. Now if only he would have been pushing the letter "z."

Will someone please buy the Left Bank of the Charles guy a lottery ticket?

Cause if he wins he said:

"(6) Put $3 million into farmland, perhaps a few hundred acres in Yamhill County, something I can tell all my Cambridge friends is a winery and all my Iowa friends is a ranch. Then, because grapes and cattle are too much work, I'll find some lazy farmer to seed it down and cut it for hay a few times a year. "

I am totally the laziest farmer I know of in Yamhill County. Orin is not lazy and he lives in Benton County and MuddyValley is a rancher and he seems to keep pretty busy photographing coyotes late at night so if he is sleeping in his arm chair during daytime it is totally understandable.

I tried out the hot tub

It is a clear and brisk night here in Western Oregon. I have found it hard to sleep after a 15 cup of coffee day.
So I thought I would give the hot tub a try. It has been somewhat of a long road to a working hot tub.
One day it showed up on a pallet in the back yard.
Much humor has been had at my expense over this endeavor.
The neighborhood Democrat brought it by on a trailer behind his Jetta. The one that used to have an Obama sticker on it. He also promised to install it.
Several farmers has questioned his motives and my sexual orientation has been called into question.
But, after much suffering the hot tub is up and running.
Today my back was killing me.
So I tried the Hot Tub.
It was nice and toasty warm. I could hear the coyotes howling and the geese honking, no doubt missing Ralph's wheat fields up North.
It was nice.
For about five minutes.
Then I got bored.
My historic experiences with hot tubs usually involved the risk of the real owners showing up and pondering the question of did I like the person I was in the hot tub with enough to help her back over the fence. So I never had the chance to be bored.
I do like long hot baths but I usually have reading material or if I am lucky my daughter has left a Lego boat in the bath. Sometimes I just fall asleep.
I tried the different jet settings. That was kind of cool.
If I had a telescope I could look though my brothers windows but I think the kids were just playing the Wii so not that exciting.
So I got out.
My back feels better.
Perhaps i need to read up on this...

Cooking pork chops with the Lazy Farmer

My wife left me Saturday evening. She went to see her college friends in the big city and left me alone. This generally means that I take a really long bath, listen The Legendary Stardust Cowboy at higher than average levels, and blog, sometimes all at the same time.
Once in a while I invite some of my friends to visit.
Sometimes I even let the dog in the house.
Living life on the edge is what I do...
This Saturday I determined to make pork chops.
It all started with bacon. She sent me out to the freezer to get bacon for my baked potatoe and I spied the pork chops.
We get pork from the Democrat in the neighborhood. I think the pigs thrive on his nitrogen rich environment. They certainly seem happy. Happy as a pig in...
He is getting back to sustainable and has found some "heritage" breeds. Tamworths and Black and Whites.
The Black and Whites are pretty fat. He feeds them my pig feed mix. Barley, Wheat, Oats, 10 percent organic soy curls, 10 percent camolina meal, 20 percent ground whole alfalfa hay, five percent clover screenings, and a touch of molasses to keep the dust down. Then he supplements with apples when they are in season. The problem is not with the vitamins and minerals as the pigs are on pasture, rather it is probably the lysine ratios. I looked at a study that showed the older breeds make fat instead of muscle at a higher rate when lysine ratios are not correct and you are feeding wheat, oats, and barley.
This is certainly a fat hog.
Oh, but so good. I never understood that fat can actually taste good!
But, i digress...
I dug out the old cast iron skillet and found some olive oil. I thought I would be healthy. However, I decided to fry up the bacon for the baked potatoe first. I just hated to waste all that wonderful bacon grease so I decided to be Southern and fry the pork chops in bacon grease. We have been saving it as it seems such a shame to throw it away. So I spooned in a couple more tablespoons, about a quarter cup and let it melt while I took care of the pork chops.
I found a walla-walla sweet onion in the pantry and cut it up and set it aside.
I spread out a half cup of flour and some coarse sea salt on a paper plate. I was looking for garlic powder and paprika but found several different types of meat seasoning. I just dumped them in randomly till I got a nice red color in the flour.
I washed and dried the pork chops and then rolled them in the flour. By this time the bacon grease was nice and hot and about a quarter inch deep across the cast iron skillet, medium heat.
When I poped the pork chops into the bacon fat they popped and sputtered enthusiastically. I also tossed in the onions. You can't go wrong with onions.
I set the timer for six minutes. I decided to go with six minutes per side. They were quite thick.
Then I started thinking about gravy. Those baked potatoes seemed kind of bare...
The chops took longer to cook than I thought. After 12 minutes they were still pink in the middle. I've been using an extra stainless steel soil thermometer as a meat thermometer but I couldn't find it in any of the flower pots or in the freezer so I just had to guess.
I put the lid back on and turned the heat down and set the timer for another six minutes.
Then I started thinking about gravy.... Mmmm gravy.... How did Grandma used to do it?
I found some flour and some milk.

After the chops were done I set them aside to drain a bit of the grease off.
I was amazed to find there was little of anything stuck to the bottom of the skillet. So I dumped in some flour and started stirring with a fork. This is the touchy part.

I wanted the flour to get sticky and lumpy and then I'd brown it a bit, but I started with too much grease which took too much flour. I should have drained off some grease or stopped when it was not quite as thick. I browed the flour mixture and then added milk. It took a lot more milk to get it to correct thickness than I wanted to use. I left it pretty thick which was a little too much flour for my taste.

Was it good? Oh my! It was incredible... I could actually feel my arteries hardening as I ate.
If I would only have had some fresh lettuce, I'd have poured a little hot bacon grease on that and had "Wilted Lettuce" and I'd of felt I was in my Grandma's kitchen .

It was really too much for me. The gravy was so rich I couldn't eat it all. I gave the rest of it to Stanley (the dog) and he can't even move today...

Removing a stuck bolt

I am not accomplishing much. Have suffered a loss of energy. I tend to go off on irrelevant projects. Like removing this stuck bolt when I can't figure out how to hook up the hydraulics on the loader so it it will work on my 806 International. That is partly because the loader is an utter piece of crap and the tractor is also an utter piece of crap and I can't believe I actually thought I could get it to work.
I do not understand how someone could utterly butcher something like this loader and actually use it. Or why I thought I could get it to work...
So I removed a stuck bolt...
I tried PB blaster, ATF and Acetone (50/50 mix), and I gave up. There was just a nub sticking through the casting and each time I gripped it with the Visegrip it would make that nub smaller.
Speaking of Visegrip pliers. They have been bought by Irwin and production has been moved to China. They are now slightly clunkier and of much cheaper construction. I never really thought of a Vise-Grip as a precision instrument but they certainly have become less so. I am planning on stocking up at garage sales. How could they ruin the Vise-Grip!  (another reason Romney lost-everybody hates corporate America!)
But, I digress...
I found an old square head nut that was slightly larger than the bolt. I centered it over the stub sticking out of the casting and then fired up the welder.
Welded the inside of the nut to the bolt and then waited till it cooled down.
I sprayed liberal amounts of acetone/ATF mixture on the offending bolt.
After it was cool, I clamped my Vice-Grip onto the head of the bolt and it came out easily.
The welder puts the heat directly onto the bolt plus it seems to shrink the bolt as well. It just turned right out.

On a side note: I am getting too much spam so there will be either comment approval or one of those anti-spambot things that I hate.
It is kind of strange, they focus on one post and then when I delete the post they move to another one. I don't quite get the methodology but they are quite persistent.

Someone always has it worse than you do...

I got a phone call yesterday from a rather depressed young man. He is a former employee who has moved on to work for himself and more successful farmers but he is also a friend and we help each other out from time to time.
His best friend died in a helicopter crash in NY. I think he said it was the first day on the job.
Click here for a not very good news article about it
Somehow I think that my statement about the fragility of human life was not very helpful.
"You know you could walk out in the street and get hit by a bus, when its time to go its time to go..."
I've been trying to come up with comforting words.

Our first big storm of the season and I do my favorite thing

There is nothing like working in the rain. Especially with the threat of a flood, and especially with the knowledge that you had three months to move this crap before it started raining.
Our river floods if there is a huge amount of rain in the Coast Range and sometimes floods if there is a huge amount of rain locally.
If we get both it will absolutely flood.
We got both Sunday night.
I checked the river page at the US Weather Service and they were predicting 35 feet yesterday. When it gets above 35 feet we have to worry.
So I got the 2-135 out and started moving stuff. I found a MM U, disk, a plow, the harrow and roller I borrowed from the neighbor on the condition that I stored it over the winter and DIDN'T let it go under water, three rolls of plastic tile line, and the old IH tandem that I didn't move last year and people keep reminding me about. I completely forgot about the water truck that was being used for spraying and so when my brother got home we also moved that.
It was a nice afternoon.

An update to just make everybody happy- Went with a friend to check on some tires. Need a front tire for the stacker plus a rim. The rim is at least $350.
Tires for my 1983 White 2-155 FWA with 7,600 hours (at least)
18.4-38" rears in 10 ply long bar short bar radial (better for the highway) special deal for $1,600 each.
16.9"-26" front tires non radial Goodyears will give me a special deal for $1250 each.
It is going to be $6,000 to install the tires and move the inside duals to the outside.
So what is a White 2-155 FWA worth???
Should I put a down payment on a 2-185 with better tires?
Try to go another year with bald tires?
Buy these tires?
Quit farming and get a real job?
Drink heavily and sit in the hot tub?
Become a meth addict?
Run away and join a circus?
I just seem to have trouble making decisions these days...
It is only 250 acres of no-tilling..

And Furthermore (12:30 noon update)
Looks like I missed a rake when I was moving stuff. Hey it was raining really hard!
Took this photo this morning...