It was all just random...

The farmers on NAT were talking about their GPS guidance suddenly not working.... Click here!
And then there was the missile streaking through the sky! Click here...
No connection I am sure...
It was just a weather ballon, or a problem with electrical wiring, or a jet on the horizon, or we just imagined it all... Not a big deal...
Perhaps we will have another fake terrorist attack to take our minds off it....
Oh, wait that isn't needed. Miley Cyrus showed side boob! And Taylor Swift didn't and the chick with two black eyes that is only 17 flashed someone at a nightclub. (I get the entertainment news every morning when I start up Safari webbrowser...)

Monday morning and it looks like work...

I think I am about to become quite busy again. So here are some tidbits and some links and food for thought.
1. My brother sent me this link to the Whizbang guy. Apple cider maker. I want to make slightly hard cider cause I love the taste.

2. Interesting blog I found from the wizbang guy's blog (click here to go to it or find it in my blogs I'm following side bar. Agarian society or something like that.

3. I've been checking my blog statistics. People keep finding the Lazy Farmer by doing a search for drag chains for planting soybeans. The drag chains are really simple.

As you can see, I don't have a good photo of the chains. But, you can see the brackets. I copied this from the martin catalogue. The chains are the part of old truck tire chains that go over the tyre to improve traction. They are a funny looking twisted type chain. The length is not a huge issue. They need to loop behind and drag over the row. I made two brackets out of 3/8 x 1" strap which bolt to the press wheels and are bent out so that the chain loops over the row better. It doesn't work to leave two ladder-like sections of tire chain connected. It does not work like a two bar harrow. Instead it all balls up and doesn't work at all.
So, if you are searching for drag chains for planting soybeans there is your answer.

4. Old stories-Ralph has a whole (mindless ramblings blog) series of videos on youtube from his family farming history. They are pretty interesting (well to us farmer types) Click here to hear his family singing "Old Mountain Dew" from the 1950's. And here to see his other videos. I like the chainsaw music one.

5. The cousins were at our house Sunday. My brother and his wife went to the coast for their anniversary and the kids came to our house. Dad was at home by himself. We kept the fire going for him and Joey ran over and checked on him. I made sure he was ok at 10:30. He was in bed asleep. At 12 a.m. the power went out. My cell phone rang. Dad said the lights were out. We told him that we had called PGE and the lights would be on in a while. At 1:45 a.m. the phone rings again. Dad says there are no lights. I say, well just stay in bed! Do you have a flashlight. Well, yes but it is in the bedroom. I say where are you. I'm in my chair he says and it is getting cold.
So, I grab a flashlight and head out the door. It was pouring rain. I came back in and got the keys for my truck. My wife laughed at me as it is not that far.  I needed the headlights to make it though the yard. Apparently the 7th calvary had a last stand on the front lawn. There was a wagon with a tall flag and several more wagons in a circle. I think there was also a cannon and a couple dead horses plus a number of stick weapons. A lot of death and destruction for kids attending the sort of church school they attend.
I get into the house and dad is setting in his chair. I guess after I left him in bed he got up to watch a Gene Autry movie on his iBook and was caught in the living room without lights when the power failed. I built up the fire and helped him to be. I guess you can do what ever you want when you are 90 years old.
But, I digress...
I was telling the kids about dads adventures and that they need to get him to tell stories. Dad smiles and is generally happy and polite and agreeable, but he is pretty remote as well. Very hard to talk to about anything personal.
They didn't know he was somewhat of a cowboy and could stand on a horse and loop a spinning rope around him and the horse. He could shoot a dime out of the air with a .22. He made a road trip to the Pendleton Roundup in the 1940s or so. He used to ride a 4 horse team to the field with only one broke horse-standing on the backs of the  horses. He used to ride a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. He and his brothers once pushed their pet goat off the roof. Great-Grandma quit driving after forgetting how to turn off the model T and having to drive it round and round the house till it ran out of gas...
I told them they needed to hear these stories since they lived with him and one day he was going to fall over dead and then no-one would hear all those stories.

6. Interesting link to The Resistance where there is a post on the infamous naked body scanners at airports. Now we know why we are going to have to be exposed to x-ray radiation! Follow the money!

And now I've lost my train of thought. I guess I will go to work. I have to plant for some neighbors who are having a crisis and we will have to have a talk and my drill is broken and I have to pressure wash 3" of caked on mud off the drill and I want to go back to bed and my back hurts and the world seems to be falling apart and farming is looking grim and it is foggy and I have no money and no one bought me that nice White tractor or gave me a grant for 1.5 million dollars or, or, or, (sob)

Perhaps I will post a video of the cousins singing silly songs and playing with legos. That may be amusing.

Have a nice day!!!

(no-I am not proof-reading this, I have to go to work now!)

The Death of Country Music

 I don't know how to embed youtube videos in blog posts so you will have to click here and here to see this song performed live.
I heard it on the internet country and blue grass channel that I force the kids to listen to when there are here on Sunday afternoons.
Click on the links and look at the comments below the videos. Interesting.

Murder on Music Row Lyrics

(Larry Shell/Larry Cordle)

Nobody saw them running
From 16th Avenue
They never found the fingerprints
Or the weapon that was used
But someone killed country music
Cut out its heart and soul
They got away with murder
Down on music row

The almight dollar
And the lust for worldwide fame
Slowly killed tradition
And for that, someone shouldhang ("Ahh, you tell 'em Alan")
They all say "Not Guilty!"
But the evidence will show
That murder was committed
Down on music row

For the steel guitars no longer cry
And the fiddles barely play
But drums and rock 'n' roll guitars
Are mixed up in your face
Ol' Hank wouldn't have a chance
On today's radio
Since they committed murder
Down on music row

They thought no one would miss it
Once it was dead and gone
They said no one would buy them ol'
Drinkin' and cheatin' songs ("Oh, but I still buy 'em")
Well there ain't no justice in it
And the hard facts are cold
Murder's been committed
Down on music row

For the steel guitars no longer cry
And you can't hear fiddles play
With drums and rock 'n' roll guitars
Mixed right up in your face
Why the Hag wouldn't have a chance
On today's radio
Since they committed murder
Down on music row

Why they even tell the Possum
To pack up and go back home
There's been an awful murder
Down on music row

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgiILl_F7O8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMtBH9JePlw

I find a tractor on ebay and someone should buy it for me or Orin

Will someone buy me this tractor? It is far less money than is wasted by your local government in any one day. It is less money than a fancy new pickup truck. It is less money than a campaign ad and I'd painted "donated by _____" on the hood.
Plus- I would say "thank you"
Orin could also use it. He only has one White tractor which seems a bit lonely. He would sure look good blocking Volvos around hippie-town!

I plant and I listen to talk radio and get all worked up-again...

Yesterday was a bit of a frustrating day. It was supposed to be the last day of sun and I needed to get the field finished and I needed to move 15 miles down the road. I broke the bolt which holds up the gauge wheels on the drill first of all. I had that in the pickup.
Then the ace pump that supplies the fertilizer blew out. Not just a leak, no a virtual shower of $3 (?) a gallon fertilizer. (Haven't asked the price yet)
I went home and got my spare pump. But, I didn't take off the old pump. What I didn't realize is that somewhere in my continual modifications to my drill, I had changed how the pump hooked up. So...I had to change hoses and fittings.
In the end I finished. It was very muddy and who knows how successful.
This farmer heard the Oregon State reports that you get no benefit to planting wheat at high rates like 135lbs per acre, so he cut his rate to 95lbs. This was good as I didn't have to fill the drill all the time but I worry about a low rate in adverse conditions.
In between frustrations I listened to talk radio. I skipped around a bit as I was trying to find the local station in the hopes that someone would report on the "Large Red Combine" that broke an axle and was blocking 99w and answer the question if the LOG TRUCK stopped to help, what hit by a tire, or hit the combine and broke the axle. No luck on those questions.
There was a lot of discussion about this past election. Quite a bit of complaints about the third parties losing the election for the Basketball player who ran for governor.
I guess I would say that the third party rescued the election for the Republicans. I was never happy with Dave Dudley. Just another rich wine drinking dude set up by the short pants, Amway selling, mega-church attending, go to church on Sunday-rip off your neighbor on Saturday type of modern conservative that I don't like.
I actually trust the wild eyed fanatics in the constitutional party because I prefer the statement, "brother you are going to hell" to the knife in the back as practiced by the mainstream American Republican Party. (look up Trent Lott and Lindsey Gram)
So... Who lost the election in Oregon?
Well, if Dudley would have got up on the first day of the campaign and made a speech somewhere along the lines of, "Yesterday I was at the DMV to register my car and I discovered it was going to cost me over $100. So I asked what it would cost to register a big truck and they said it went from $400 to $800. I don't know how a hard-working Oregonian can run a business is this climate of taxation and regulation and I'm going to change it."
He would have got elected.
Instead it was just bland non-specific baloney and expensive TV commercials.
The Libertarian and Constitutional parties got a lot of votes. The urban cowboy-er midnight cowboy? John Kratzemheimer did not win by a landslide by any means. There were more votes against him than for him. The only people who voted for him were the Koolaid drinkers that actually want to be a little left of California.
The protest votes should be noted and appreciated. Perhaps the Republicans ought to listen to what the Libertarian and Constitution parties has to say.
Perhaps the Democrats should as well.
I think a lot of the people in these protest parties are not saying, "you must believe like me," they are saying, "let me believe what I want and let me be in charge of my life. Screw your own up if you want, just don't put it on me!"

Strange weather and adverse planting conditions

First it rained, then it was mud, now it is 70 degrees and Friday it will rain.
Here is the view out the window Monday-

This was yesterday-

This is what I did today.

Here is the last field I planted. This is not so good. I'm planting into corn stubble and it is too wet. I walked the field, farmer drove around in his pickup, but it doesn't crumble, it just slices. This is a silty clay riverbottom soil. It should dry out quicker. You can feel the silt between your fingers but it is still wet. 
I am very happy with my $20/row Air-Design scrapers. I would not be planting in these conditions without them. They have spring loaded carbide tipped blades that just peel the mud off the insides ove the v-openers.

I am now planting Geotze wheat at a 95lbs per acre. This Geotze is 63lbs per bushel so the drill will hold 2200lbs and I can plant 22 acres before filling up. It really speeds things up. But the ground is so wet I am only filling it half full.

Death of a Company-We Visit The ruins of the Freeman Baler Company

On our wanderings around Portland we drove down to the industrial area of Portland to find Great Harvest Bread Company, The former Freeman Baler factory and to see where my brother drives around with a 50 foot belt trailer.
We did find the Freeman Baler Company on Nikoli or Yeon or where ever it was. Here is a photo of the old headquarters.

And here are the loading docks. They have a whole block of buildings. It was one of those old rambling factories and was probably pretty inefficient.

Going to J.A. Freeman and Sons was always an adventure in my younger years. Sometimes we got a tour. The goal was to get a free hat (for me) and a calendar for Mom. The office had an oak counter and oak desks. There were framed blueprints on the wall. There were old and kind of grumpy people around.
The Freeman baler itself was kind of unusual. The basic design was really unchanged from the very first stationary balers.
It had large bullgears which drove a heavy plunger at fairly low speed. (75-85 strokes per minute) The whole baler was very heavy and it appear to be mostly fabricated by hand.
We have two model 200 balers with which we used to make 85lb wheat straw bales at below 16 percent moisture. That it making a bale so tight that if a string breaks they explode.
The company was bought by Allied Systems a few years ago and moved from North East Portland to an industrial park somewhere. Of course they screwed all their old dealers in the modern AGCO tradition and Freeman baler sales came to a complete standstill in our area.
In fact, I bought a Hesston 3-tie and we sold our 3-tie Freeman because we couldn't get parts. The fact that I, the owner of Minneapolis-Moline tractors, a Studebaker car, a Triumph motorcycle, and Mac computers actually switched brands should be an object of study by classes in salesmanship world wide.
Here is the companies tombstone (click here)
It appears that they are still being made. I would like to have two new 2-tie balers as that seems to be where the market is going, but I will probably buy New Holland balers as I don't want to deal with the local John Deere dealer who is the local Freeman dealer and who is trying to bury the brand.