Need more stuff in my cab

Waiting on trucks and playing with my new phone

My Wife and daughter bought me an iPhone 5. My wife implied it was a free upgrade, my daughter just laughed. 

It  has made the silage chopping much more enjoyable. Now, whilst I am waiting for trucks I  can look at Tractorhouse.com, craigslist, and there iss an app for blogger. I am using a bluetooth keyboard totype. it is a pain in da arse.

I amwatching the neighors chop clover with a big Claus chopper and 10 trucks. We are down to the IH as our neighbor helper had a dentist appointment. 1.5 loads an hour right now...The Claus is doing a Semi truck   evey five minutes.

Sitting in the G1355 with my  a/c on and looking at White American series  tractors on Tractorhouse.

Note: Dont look up White 2-110 on the craigslist app. Your wife willl not uderstand if you click on the wrong adevert. Much, Much, Worse is White 4-270.

More silage

I hate these Reader's Digest Condensed versions of spring. All the adventure in 20 pages.

I've been remiss on my repairs and so a lot of things are not ready to go. I kept thinking I'd hire someone or take the stacker somewhere to get the brakes repaired, but I didn't.

The weather has gone from rain to sun in a day and the worked ground is now round rock-like clods on top and mud underneath.

We were faced with the decision to work the ground to kill the weeds and risk getting it rained on and packed down or dealing with two-foot-tall annual ryegrass to work under. Now the ground is sealed up and since the water table is less than 18 inches below the surface, I think the strip-tiller will bring up mud.

I have traditionally been the silage chopper operator so it is up to my brother to make the decision on working the ground for corn. I suppose we should have all worked all night like the real farmers do...

Yesterday I planted 12 acres of barley for my neighbor and 13 acres of oats for us. This was a lot of replanting, cleaning out the drill, and talking. But it needed to be done.

Today we are back to silage chopping.

Last Saturday we finished our clover field by noon. At around 3 p.m. I got  a call from the fellow that lives on the gravel road that leads to the dairy. He was upset by the speed of the trucks going by his house.

I do find it sort of entertaining that people complain about the speed of a 1971 International tandem and a 1976 Chevy tandem. The drivers also complain about the speed, or shall we say, Lack of speed...

I've told the drivers to take it easy on the gravel, especially past Jose's house, the house of the fellow who owns the clover fields, and the fellow who says he works at home for an internet company but who I think actually spend his time in that windowless "office" looking at porn and playing with starwars toys.
But I digress,

The new neighbor works in the wine industry. He is quite proud of being in the wine industry and thinks this somehow makes him part of the local farming community.

He came over to introduce himself and to buy hay this fall. He noted that he was in the wine industry. As a result I added twenty percent to the price of the hay.
We did have a nice chat. I asked him if he realized that every time a truck went down the gravel road the wind would blow dust into his house. He did not see that as a potential problem.
He was wearing short pants and Romeo slippers with no socks.
If found that somewhat amusing.
Eventually I listened to the message he left me. He thought the trucks were going too fast, too much dust, AND he was afraid they would hit his dog.
I found the message more amusing than anything else. I live 50 feet from a road that has continual truck traffic. I figure that if we have a dog dumb enough to get hit by a truck then we might as well get it over with sooner than later.
It is good to have another reminder of the difference between us and THEM.
I think it is my responsibility to keep my dog out of the road, they think it is the truck driver's responsibility NOT to hit their stupid dog standing in the middle of the road.
I feel sort of bad for them. They bought a house which is down wind from a gravel road. Every afternoon at 4 p.m. we get quite the sea breeze. The dust is very bad.
The must have bought the house on a rainy day.

Happy, happy! Blessed is the day!

For those of you who read my blog and worry that I may run off to sunny climes and not cut your hay... I have recovered somewhat this morning. I am in a joyous and thankful mood. (yesterday was a bad day) Not really that bad, no one got hurt, no serious damage, just my usual luck, many little annoying things went wrong. I was constantly reminded that I am a pathetic farmer. Just the usual... Wears one down after a while. A/C keeps quitting. I tightened up the belt and put the mounting bolt though the bottom of the A/C compressor. Fixed it with loctite and silicone jammed up the hole...
Last night I took my prescription of muscle relaxant, (thank you Dr. R.M. Rose) and actually slept well. And it is overcast so I overslept a bit. This morning I got my dose of scripture reading from Buffalo and Perpetual.
I fixed myself some eggs and bacon. Left a little bacon for my daughter who is sleeping in, and I'm almost ready to face the day.
My little helper arrived early and is setting in the store drinking coffee. He likes to set in the store and drink coffee. I'm thinking he will probably NOT fix his tail lights. He also has a huge leak in the radiator on the IH truck. I need diesel and gas and something else which I don't remember....
Perhaps I shall fall back on the medical efforts of Dr. Rose... If it were good enough for the CSA then it oughta be good enough for me....

Yesterday things went wrong, today things also went wrong.

I sort of hate farming. In theory I love farming. Being your own boss, growing crops, working ground (it is like playing with Tonka trucks but on a huge scale), doing different things all the time, carrying through with a plan. And I like how things work together.
I hate farming in that I never succeed. I hate farming because modern farmers are dickheads. I hate farming because I see people who are morons, who are arseholes, who are totally undeserving, who probably are less endowed than I, but yet they are making bucks up...
I've been attempting to chop clover silage for my neighbor. It is not working well at all.
The windrows are just a touch wider than the pickup on the chopper. We have another one but it is broken and nothing ever gets fixed here at poop and sit back down in it farms... (PSBD)...
I would complain to the farmer but I have not the slightest idea why he hires us to chop his clover anyway. Who wants 30 year old crap running around in their field?
I watched the clover silage process at other neighbor's farm. I have been trying to score his sixty acres for the local dairy for the past couple years. His silage guy came in with a 600 hp Krone and 15 trucks and they did it in three hours. It would have taken me a week- at the rate I'm going at.
Our utter piece of crap IH blew a tire yesterday. We can't work after dark because we don't have tail lights and my little helper doesn't know how to fix them.
The silage chopper has had multiple bearing failures. But then again, it never got serviced at the end of the season last year and barely was serviced before starting silage.
Today I wore a hole in the spout liner which cause the clover to not fly out of the spout which resulted in me digging silage out of the spout for a half hour.
I took it home to work on it. A new liner from New Holland is $400. My little helper is a little short on energy. We have enlisted another broke neighbor to help haul silage. His helper is quite capable. He dove right in and helped change the spout. He pays attention to what we are doing and asked intelligent questions. I'd love to have him spend a week doing everything my little helper won't do.
Two of his previous employers have repeatedly warned us that he is a kleptomaniac. Of course he is... If something is too good to be true, then it is...
On the way back to the field I blew out a tire on the chopper. The little car that was passing me when the tire blew did not stop to help. (Probably was in a hurry to clean the poopie out of her pants.)
I sat in the ditch whilst waiting for my little helper to bring me a tire and watch the real farmers go by. No one even waved.

I hate antique crap, I hate farmers in general, I hate nice weather, i hate rain, I hate silage, I hate silage choppers, I hate old equipment, I hate working, and I've never really been fond of cheese.
The ONLY nice thing that happened to me today was the smile on my daughter's face when I picked her up from school on my old Triumph. I suppose that not having your stomach in a knot for 15 minutes out of the day would be a glass half full moment for most of my highly spiritual and agriculturally successful readers.
Perhaps tonight I will have that wonderful dream where I have a D-8 cat and push everything on this stinking farm into one big pile of recycling....
I need to register the farm name I think as well. Perhaps I'll just go by the acronym. PSBD or is it SSBD?

Yesterday many things went wrong but we soldiered on...

We are chopping clover silage for our neighbors.
We have to drive down a long gravel driveway past some very odd and annoying people. The people whose house is five feet from the road wave at every truck. The people who live 200 feet from the road got angry. Sort of a road rage incident.
Plus, bearings went out... Got the wrong bearing, KRRB103-2 and I got a KRRB103- random number which was wrong. About 20 minutes of road time later and 1/16" difference.
Took a long time to put it back together.
Fuel tank leak. Used a tooth pick jammed in the microscopic hole to slow it down.
Planted 6 acres of flax, cleaned out the drill, charged the A/C on other 2-155, chopped 13 loads of silage. Kind of a lot of nothing.
Here is the PTO bearing, the oil seal popped out. We didn't have a spare bearing. I packed it full of grease and popped the seal back in.

Here is the bearing that failed had to weld around the inside of the race to get come out of the housing.

And the work begins, Chopping silage with the G1355

Yesterday I chopped silage...
This is the view out my window.

Orin send me a hay cutting photo which I seem to have lost. He was claiming it was the 1970's. Well, we are into the 1980's up here in the North Valley.

I should be planting. I need to plant. I have flax to plant and corn to plant and oats, and barley, and other people want me to plant.
But, it is also silage time.
Red clover is grown for seed in this area. The first bloom of clover comes in a couple weeks. This is not a good time to harvest seed and so the clover is either mowed back, turned into hay, or chopped for silage.
We found the silage chopper and started servicing it.
At noon my phone started ringing. I ignored it and tucked into my steak and baked potatoe. Then the shop phone rang. Then my wife's phone rang.
My neighbor was quite worried about her hay. They cut Sunday and discovered the ground was too wet and the hay was not drying. Would I chop it for silage?
And so we did.
Pretty much a record in getting ready.
Silage chopper was in the back pasture. Took the corn header off, put grass header on, washed it, greased it, hooked it up and started chopping at 5 p.m. A neighbor did the hauling. We took a dump box and the 2-155 over to make up for not having a truck ready and because the field was so soft.
It is a long haul for one truck.
The A/C works on the G1355 but not on the Smith and Smith 2-155. (of course)
I put the 1355 on the chopper because I like the A/C. Plus my little helper has trouble getting in the door.