White Christmas

We had snow.
I just downloaded the photos off my camera. I ordered some fertilizer parts for my Great Plains drill. I am such an utter scrounge. I put liquid fertilizer on my Great Plains 1500 drill. After paying an unmentionable sum for this same drill this year. (A story of its own) I decided to scrimp on adding the liquid fertilizer. Mainly because I had NO money left. I knew that the LBrothers Shop used to sell the Blumhardt liquid fertilizer system. I actually found one on a drill that a friend of mine bought used. It is pretty cool, instead of a spray boom it uses individual fittings that all screw together kind of like an erector set. And I got it for free. And there you have a photo of it! So, anyhow, I found out the company was still in business and called them to see if they made a special attachment to put the fertilizer down between my double disc openers. Right now I'm just using nylon drip tube with I've zip tied to the seed flaps. This is not so precise and not so durable. I of course became confused and tripped over my words and terms so I'm sure the folks at Blumhardt thought I was an idiot, and of course I got the wrong fertilzer tube. So I took pictures of the whole set up and emailed them off to Blumhardt this evening.
Which brings me to the White Christmas. We haven't had one of those in Oregon for a very long time. We had a good two weeks of snow. We had a little over a foot here at the farm. Folks up in the hills had four feet. I'm going to have to make the long trek to Gopher Valley and look at my hay shed. Four feed of snow is a lot of wet stuff on my hay.
So here are some photos. Sun was not out and I didn't adjust the white balance on my camera. Should have used film. Could have done it with film. But it was a dark and gloomy week. The snow just kept coming down. Studebaker photo is early in the week. White tractor photo is probably Christmas day. I see freezing rain on the windows so it would have been near the end. The snow is pretty deep on the hood.
I spent the time doing some serious sledding with Miss S. I took the blade to the hill one the road going down to the river bottom. I packed and graded a mini bobsled run. We had a pretty good time I must say... Although my extra weight on the sled resulted in an increase in speed with put a little out side on the turn which meant- through the fence and into the black berry patch. Miss S. was a good sport and helped her aged father back up on the road!
Note: Pictures are all out of order. I'm betting anyone clever enough to find this blog is clever enough to figure out what I'm talking about...

Trivial Pursuits

I have a lot to do. I need to overhaul the engine on my White 2-135, the hydraulics are leaking badly on the 2-155, the Moline G1355 has a bad knock, the G1000 vista needs a hydraulic pump and a transmission rebuild. The M670 Super needs an amplitorque, clutch, and electrical work, the old M670 needs hoods, the other M670 needs to be put back together and who know what else, plus the Hesston 4690 needs plunger and header repair, stacker needs work, grain drill needs to be finished, and the list goes on.
Went to dealer yesterday to check on getting Hesston in the shop. Fellow didn't really want to work on it. Said the plunger guides were a pain to remove. Suggested time anywhere from 4 hrs to a day. I did find out there was a 15 percent discount on parts if ordered by the 15th so I went back home and made a list of parts. Ouch...
Also attempted to get the right tires on my grain drill. 11.5 x 15 eight ply multi-rib implement tyres are now $113 each. Up fifty bucks from the last time I bought.
In the midst of my parts list search I got a call from my first sale of ground feed. He wants more! He admitted I was selling too cheap at .12$ per pound. He wants another ton. He did say that some of the bags were a bit wet but that I had certainly added enough extra feed to make up for it. Seemed quite happy. So, instead of doing real work I'm going to fire up the old hammer mill and grind another ton of feed.
When I'm planting I charge $26 per acre. I can do a good 10 acres per hour.
Grinding feed I can do a ton in an afternoon. That would be $240. What would make me the most money, grinding feed or getting my drill ready? What do you think I'm going to do? (hint, when grinding feed I almost always get paid cash...)

For Collieguy

Should you still be watching this blog and wondering why the Studebaker never gets any further down the road. At least now it is parked....

I attempted to read a book...

I was looking at my beat up collection of old dime novels when I came across this supposed gem. A pocket books copy of "The Razor's Edge," by W. Somerset Maugham. I attempted to put a link in there but only managed to mess up my fonts. 

I did attempt to read this book. I will admit that most of my reading time is either late at night or in the bathroom as I have a 7 year-old only child who likes to spend as much time as possible with her father. I am typing this right now laying in bed with her. She was having difficulty going to sleep and needed some security.

We were reading "The Lion's Paw" earlier in the evening. I may have put a wee bit to much dramatic flair to Ben's encounter with the alligator. I will admit to also changing the story line to the alligator catching up to Ben as he frantically rowed down the creek. She figured out there was a deviation from the story line when the alligator's jaws closed round the boat splintering into a million chunks of twisted wreckage, Ben's frail body ground between the jaws of the gasping leviathan until his head popped off his mangled body like a cork from a bottle, bouncing off the broken boards like a ripe pumpkin, the narrative was interrupted by the usual frustrated "DADeeeee," followed by, that's not how the story goes... I know you changed it." Not sure what gave me away. I thought it was much more exciting this way. Would have ended the sailing adventure a tad prematurely however.

But, I digress.

I was unable to wade through even the beginning of The Razor's Edge. The dense prose, the whole Eastern, pre-beatnick, finding oneself BS just got to me. The noble fighter pilot, suffering from the great war eschews fame and fortune to wander and find true meaning in life sounds much better when you are a dumb-ass college student. 

I think I enjoyed "The Lion's Paw," a bit more. Actually having trouble reading one chapter at a time. No wonder it has been out of print for years it is actually a good book...

Fogggy Saturday Part 2

Had my coffee break. Nice fellow who everyone calls "cowboy" brought doughnuts and his friend Mr. Cook. Cowboy is retired. Rebuilds saddles, rides horses, goes to rodeos, wears a big old cowboy hat and a rodeo belt buckle. Used to work for the city road department. So, everyone calls him Cowboy. Mr. Cook is in his 80's. He made a fortune building roads and buildings and doing important things though the 50's till the mid 1980's. He is an interesting old guy. Can't get around without a walker but Cowboy brings him out for coffee break on Saturdays. Usually brings a box of doughnuts.
Phillip also stopped buy. He is your classic old German farmer. Big fellow who has worked like a dog all his life. Not holding up so well. He stops buy a lot more often than he used to. While here he got a call from someone wanting to buy hay. He said he was in an important meeting and would be a while. "Business before pleasure," is what he told the caller. Everyone throught that was pretty funny.
I got a call. Neighbor wants to buy a bag of feed. That would be a 500lb bag of feed. I just put everything away so I've got to go dig the hammer mill and tractor out of the barn again. Have the windrower parked in the way and the battery is dead. Put a charger in it and came in the house. Sitting in my chair having my fourth cup of coffee.
Hammer mill is a story.
I have a kid who used to work for me. Dad always calls him Eddie but that's not his name. Dad is just hard of hearing. Everyone now calls him Eddie.
Well, Eddie wants to be a farmer. He especially likes the riding around in pickups and talking to people, looking at interesting tractors in the Machinery Trader, and doing fun projects. Fun projects may involve a lot of effort but generally they do not qualify as real work.
Eddie raises a few Black Angus steers for beef and he has been complaining about feed prices. Wilco is $10 for a 50lb bag of pellets. I happen to half a truckload of barley and about the same amount of oats. Now what do you do with half truckloads in this day and age. Fuel was $4 a gallon and the nearest cleaner was a 60 mile round trip. So we unloaded the truck into 500lb bags and they are sitting in the barn attracting rats. Eddie was sniffing around and found our pristine 1930 something Minneapolis-Moline hammer mill. He just had to try it out.
This hammer mill was an early acquistion in our collecting efforts. We got it some 20 years ago at the local auction. It has been gradualy being buried under our continual layering of interesting crap since that time. A couple years ago the local steam up folks wanted to borrow it. It was in the summer and I didn't have time to mess with it so I said if they could dig it out they could have it. They didn't dig it out...
So Eddie and I yarded it out. It had good screens and a 20ft flat belt. We built a base and set it up in the barn. Then we discovered our tractor with a belt pulley no longer had the belt pulley. That was quite a hunt. Finally we dug up a NOS pulley out of the old parts house at the farm.
So we were up and running. Except that the pulley was rubbing on the wide front in of the U. I did have a 1949 MM Z with a narrow front but it had never really ran and was setting out behind the house as part of the scrap pile.
The carb was full of rust so I rebuilt it and then dumped some muratic acid in the fuel tank to get rid of the rust. I through the tank in the back of my pickup for a couple days so the acid could slosh around. I then rinsed and dried the tank. It was bright and shiney inside.
My brother is much better at ignition stuff than I am so he got the old girl running. I installed the new tank and the old Z was sounding pretty good. Then I noticed the fuel leaks. The whole bottom of the tank was full of pinholes. I guess I had a tad more rust than I thought. Fortuantly we do have more old MM tractors behind the barn so I had another tank.
We hooked her up to the flat belt and away we went. We are in the feed business now! Would be really stylin if it were 1949!

Fogggy Saturday

Today would be a perfect day for me to be in a Lazy Farmer cartoon. I do have a rocking chair, don't have a beard but am sporting three days worth of stubble, I don't have a potbellied stove. I guess that pretty much puts me out of the cartoon. I guess i'll actually have to go to work.
Was able to waste most of the day yesterday. Started out pretty good, after an extended rest in the house, and a couple cups of coffee. My sloth was interrupted by a call from my friendly New Holland salesman who is calling to tell me the used 1085 NH balewagon is ready to be delivered.
Since he always asks about my no-till drill I thought I would wash it so that it would be all nice and shiny for his inspection. I had sort of hoped that my employee who is actually even more lazy than myself had really cleaned it like I asked him to do before he took off for the winter.
Perhaps I should digress and explain my employee.
Well, I would talk about him but I see the fellow who always brings doughnuts for coffee break is hear. There ain't much better than a maplebar and a cup of watery coffee to get me out of work on a cold foggy morning! Yessir!

To Post or Not to Post

It is a beautiful day outside. It is 8:29 a.m. and I'm really not in the mood to work. I am hardly ever in the mood to work in the winter. That is why the blog is titled "the lazy farmer."
There are a couple reasons for this lack of enthusiasm. First it is the two inches of mud everywhere on this farm. Second is my frustration with farming. So, I'm sitting in my easy chair letting prime working weather pass me by. Much like the fabled lazy farmer of the old Farm Journal cartoons.
The plus side of my whole winter depression is I did write in my blog for the first time since the great blow-up of 2007 when I deleted two years of blogging with a click of a key...
I just wonder who still checks my blog?