Category: Tractor

Hydraulic Toplink

Well, that’s one hydraulic toplink installed on the tractor. I did not make a video of it as I wanted it done. Besides, there are loads of videos on the internet already that show how to do it on the same or similar tractors. Any of those is sufficient. I watched quite a few and anticipated troubles before I started mine, so I had a goodd idea of what to expect, and it went on quite easily.

As you can see, I put the check valve on the bottom, and have not yet done anything about the wire to hang it from when not in use. That is not a huge concerne as I have so far never had the tractor without an impliment on the three point. It doesn’t make sense to if constantly or even unexpectedly using the loader is benefited by the extra weight on the rear of the machine.

When fully lifted, the hoses will bump into the fuel tank, which is not satisfying. The curve of th hoses bumps into the angled arm of the box blade, too, which is also not satisfying. So there may be a change when I work out how it needs to be directed for that not to happen.

The ability to just flip a lever in the cab to lengthen and shorten the toplink sure is a lot easier than getting out and turning a huge turnbuckle to do the same. That’s better in the weather, and it is much quicker and easier when an angle would highly benefit the drag of the box blade.

I founf that tilting the blade fully back is relatively non-destructive for the grass, and cutting down mole hills. Tilting it fully forward digs right in! That is very destructive. Perhaps I will fine the tile back much better for snow removal next winter, since there is obviously not going to be any more measurable snowfall this year. Obviously. Which, by the way, today’s snow did not amoung to much, so that is a relief. I think tilting back is good for simple smoothing. That ought to come in very handy while doing further driveway repairs after this hellish mud season! Tilting back should hopefully be less destructive while clearing snow off any of our grass driveways, so they hopefully won’t turn into mud in the first place!

Finally, I can think of the scarifiers digging in deeper when the box blade is tilted forward during use. Handy or not, now the angle is up to me, and easily achieved.

Water Levels Going Down!

It is snowing as I type this. The forcast calls for less than 2 inches total. What’s more, the water in every pond, puddle, and place water can sit on our property has gone down by maybe three inches or so since yesterday. Then, apart from a splash of rain forecast for Monday it is at worst partly cloudy skies for the coming week or more. So I am not going to let myself feel as though we are getting any consequential setbakcs with what will fall. Not to compare this to a glass is half full situation as in our case, the glass is finally half empty, and things are improving as it goes down!

What’s more, I recieved the hydraulic toplink for the tractor this morning. There is some prep work to do to it before I put it on the tractor. It is a simple installation, so it should be easy. That will allow me to change the angle of attack on the boxblade, allwing me to either dig into, or smooth out the mud. I would prefer to smooth it. It shoudl also improve the angle when using the scarifiers to pull rock up on roadbase or gravel drives. Not that I have any, or anywhere near enough.

The winter storm advisory is now replaced with a precipitation alert that goes till 1:00PM, so there’s no telling that will really come of it, but I don’t think much.

The Mud Situation

The weather relaxed this evening, though we are meant to wake up to snow again tomorrow morning. I got out a bit this afternoon and hada go at the start of the driveway towards the backyard with the tractor. I was able to smooth some of it down and make it almost passable. But the quicksand bed is still there, lingering half way back towards the backyard.

The middle of this photo is a bed of quicksand. As soon as I drive the tractor past where my footprints lead up to, in it goes. I suspect that it is deep enough to bury even my back wheels if I get into it.

So the drive is much smoother and more stable now leading up to the patch where I get that sinking feeling. I was able to scrape some of the earth that had been pushed out to the side of the drive back into it with the box blade. I then smoothed with a backdrag. I was even able to get back to another pit at the entry of the Service Yard, but that is only a place where I have to drive past, and quite close to the pit, I might add. I don’t think I will be going into the Service Yard for some time yet, as there are a couple of quicksand pits in it.

The water here is the first place I lost my tractor into the mud.

The water inbetween the gates is the spot that brushes so close to the main driveway, and also threatens to swallow my tractor whole.

Here is the water from the previous picture and the driveway area that I was able to smooth out. It is a close call as some of the drive had been collapsing into the water, but a bit of fresh, relatively dry dirt was able to shore it up some.

Finally, once I can get the tractor to the back of the property, this is what awaits me where the animal feed has been kept. There is no good way into it till the water recedes from the farm behind our house. Every approach to the hay has been waterlogged and the tractor has sunken into it. All I can do is get close enough, then hand carry the bales to the loader on the tractor and carry it from there.

This is all a mental note to self not to put the hay back on the garden spot again. I need to gravel the drives, and the spots I intend to park and move about with the tractor, and I need to gravel a spot to rest the hay on. This place has clearly not worked!

It’s Amazing How Tired…

A fella can get from driving down to pick up a trailer, then another one. The trip was maybe 40 miles each way, but the driving and maybe the stress takes a toll on the old body. It is the arthritis playing me up, for sure.

But the point is, Missus has a new trailer to take to the Farmer’s markets, and I got one to put the tractor on.

A nice box trailer with a ramp on the back to make a mobile shop for Missus to use at the Farmer’s Market’s and out front of the house. This will allow her to set up a shop space without the month-to-month cost that I believe can kill a small business.

This flatbed trailer should help in many ways! It has stake pockets so I can build sides to keep long logs on it, and it has D-rings and ramps so I can load the tractor on it. I’d like to put a winch on it to load a dead car, truck, or tractor onto it.

Both trailers seem good, with solid jacks and decent LED lights. The electrical connectors are great compared to the other trailers I have, and the chains and spare tires are very nice. The rigs feel adequate for their purposes.

So, I suppose at this moment, I can hire out for tilling for spring gardens if anyone needs it. I should also be fine to do box blading, and post hole digging. I don’t really want to do junk haulage and have to pay out of my citizen’s account to unload at the dump for others. But I do want to get firewood and logs for milling on the trailer and bring them around to the house to work on.

So that’s where I think we’re at. We have more projects to handle now, since these trailers need a bit of customization to complete them. And right now, the mud is so bad, I cannot even take them to the back of the house or over to the designated trailer parking to get them off the front drive. It’s storms for the next few days, then we have warmer temps finally passing through! I’ll have plenty to do once the ground finally dries up!

A Passing Snow Squall in the Night

I woke up nearly at 2:00 AM last night. After tending to my personal reason for waking, I went back to bed, and checked the weather on my tablet. There were four weather alerts but two were about actual precipitation. The first was a typical winter weather advisory, and the second warned of a snow squall about to hit our place. Well, I have heard of blizzards and the like before, and seen them on occasion. But a squall? I may have been through them before, but the only way to know for certain was to stay up the fifteen minutes necessary to let this squall set in over us. Once the allotted time had passed, I checked out the glass of the balcony door. Looked pretty much like a blizzard to me! There was little visible but sheets of snow hammering down from the sky. I could see the neighbor’s house, and the people next to them while their light was on. But beyond that, nothing could be seen but the snowfall. It came down pretty steadily at about a 45-degree angle. It would have certainly laid down a lot of snow if it stayed around for longer, but it only lasted about an hour. Then we were back to a clear night with high cloud cover. Nothing to worry about.

By morning about three inches of snow topped what we already had on the ground from previous days. I cleared that from the dog walk and the mailbox approach with the tractor. It was light and fluffy. Would have been great for skiing in! As we are only about two weeks till the start of Spring, I sure welcome it! Go ahead and do your will, old sky. It’s not like we don’t need the snow to help us long!

My next task is to get the dehydrator going and put in some meat I got to make jerky with. It has marinated long enough by now, and I need to do this before it goes bad. I thought I had reports due for the school, but they are not due till next week. I won’t want to keep it till then, as it is my birthday then. It is a happy Sunday here on the farm!

End of February Update.

It is definitely still winter here at the farm. We have good chances of snow for most of the coming week. Looks from the weather radar that whatever does come will likely have to form, as nothing closer to the west coast seems to be heading our way. It was warm today, though! We got up to 38F according to our weather station.

The SDR Radio I got the other day worked as expected. I got it running that day and played around with it, then delivered the second one to the desktop computer upstairs but did not yet set that one up. It’s fascinating how it can read or see the whole spectrum, and portions of it visible at once to tell where different signals are and have a hint to what kind they are. FM Radio signals are amazing, especially where they have digital encoding on both sides of the frequency. Even stations without that digital encoding are amazingly powerful compared to the rest of the spectrum. I will have to work on reception and an improved arial.

The tractor reached 200 hours yesterday. That’s just shy of five months! I cannot believe we are coming up to five months of ownership already! It still seems new to me. Most of its work here has bene snow clearing, but as soon as the weather breaks to spring, I think it will see a total shift! I may move big snow piles into the orchard just to get the trees started for the year. I may have to move a lot of hay off the garden and start it for tilling. I want that space tilled four or more times prior to planting in May and June. There will be post holes to dig, too. I am going to have to reset some fencing and clear some old areas out. Then there is the firewood. I don’t expect to muck about with that this year, since I want to be two years stored by autumn, and since I want to have a load of wood to work with. I hope to see this whole area of my chores severely altered to what it has been in previous years.

I got the second GoPro camera that I have been thinking about. If I am going to do a YouTube channel, then this setup I have is good enough to do it with. I would benefit from a lavalier mic, but I have a separate sound recorder that can also do the trick for now. I’ll have to give it a try. I am having a card reader delivered so I can put one on my laptop and one on my desktop to unload videos and edit. I have tried out the GoPro cloud, and I am not terribly thrilled with any of it, apart from the discount they offer to users while shopping. I’d rather keep the filed local, I think. Then I’ll only upload final cuts to the Internet. I have yet to see any real advantage apart from having apparently all the space I need to keep every crap video file I make. That may turn out to be the seeds of a problem. But who knows? Maybe in the next few weeks I’ll get a video created and uploaded to the channel again.

Mondy is anticipated to be the day we have our deli slicer delivered. I have been wanting a proper one for many years now, and we have what appears to be a decent one on the way. It is a Berkel 300 Redline. I am a little worried about it after seeing the shipping details. For whatever reason, it is listed with a shipping weight of 122 pounds. I am having trouble believing that, but I worry that I believe wrong. I guess we’ll see what it is like when it gets here. But honesty, how can a home line slicer weight so much? Maybe they packed it in a wooden crate?

I have very few hand tools left in my wish list now. A shipment arrives also on Monday. It is just a few things, and while there are a couple more planes to be desired, I think I have enough to get a real start in my workshop. Spring will give us access to the barn for cleanup, and to rearrange our storage. I have a permanent wall to fix into the old garage door of my shop. That wall wants a window built into it for some heat and light. Missus has a kiln on order that also wants a home in the shop.

So, a lot is going on this year. I think we will be able to reach closer than ever to self-sufficiency. I have always said that it is a very expensive state to reach. On the upside, I am where I can start building some of the remaining tools I need. I am even considering building my own travishers. I’ll still have to buy the blades, but the handles and bodies will save me around $100 each. That’s not small potatoes. Small potatoes come from my garden.

There you have it! An end of February summary. That’s what’s going on, and where we are at, and where we are going for the moment. I am excited to be at the point in life where I feel like I finally have a life, and all the things that that entails. Having moved country twice and other events that have left me with next to nothing, it is a hard thing to recover from. But I feel quite like I have arrived. Everything else is just improving things up and building equity. For me, that’s a good place to be. Oh, and I am about two weeks short of my 52nd birthday.

Record Cold

Previously our record cold temperature was -9F. It was set on New Year’s in 2019, I think. Since the weather station keeps the all-time record readily available, I cannot look up the second coldest, and third, and so on. That got bumped recently to -11. That record was set a couple of weeks ago. I was kind of proud of it. But even more recently, during a cold snap that hit us this week, we hit a new all-time record of -21F just yesterday. The forecast called for it, then set us up to immediately get into a warming trend that would bring us back up to normal temperatures in just three days or so. I trust lawyers and weathermen just as much as I trust car salespeople. Especially as much as I do sat here now at around 2:00AM the next day, monitoring the temps and our water pipes. An hour ago, we hit -23. It went up since then to the old record of -21 when I got up feeling the briskness in the house. Typically, one can expect the coldest part of the day to happen around sunrise. That gives us about five hours or so to reset this record again.

Out of interest, Peter Sinks hit a low yesterday of -42.56F. Peter Sinks is 20.82 miles from our house at a heading of 70.22 degrees. It holds the record for second coldest place in the lower United States at -69.3F, recorded in 1985. The coldest on record is at Roger’s Pass in Montana which in 1954 recorded a comparatively bone chilling -69.7. Peter Sinks is a geographic feature in the northern Utah mountains near Bear Lake. One can think of it as a sort of dish shape that collects falling cold air in its bottom. Trapped there, the air cannot fall out and dissipate, so as more cold air falls in from the atmosphere, it just gets colder and colder.

2:35AM just passed by, and we hit -24F. That ancient record has been edged out.

When I woke up about half an hour ago, I found the woodstove had a couple of logs in it that were putting up a decent fight against the cold. There was room for some more, so I went out to the stash on the front porch to bring in some more. I had nearly emptied the bunk in the house with the couple I added to the stove. I can only imagine for now that the logs I had found burning away in it were added by a chilly Missus who must have been up recently. The girls and I are sleeping in the living room again tonight, which is the room next to where the stove is. Despite all the stove’s effort, it is chilly in here. Of course, under the massive comforter I have wrapped around me, that chill is not so menacing. I hope the girls have enough blankets to prevent the assault. They both have their heads under, so I would guess they are a little chilly. The older one recently awoke and pulled another over her, then fell back to sleep. I may have to trek upstairs to get them each one or two more.

With the record set yesterday, and our all-time high on my weather station of 104F, that put our temperature spread to 125 degrees. Obviously, that is going to be a bit greater by morning. -25F has already slipped by us in the time I spent typing, and I think it is fair to expect -30 to go by before the sun rises. It is 2:50AM and I think I am going to get up and boil the kettle for Missus’ 3:00AM wake up, get those blankets for the girls and encourage the woodstove to flex its muscles.

I must have put too much wood in the woodstove because it has warmed up outside to -24. Missus is up and quickly on her second cup of tea. She says I used too small a cup for her first. I checked that water was running at a drizzle in both of the bathrooms. I brought some wood in from the stores on the front porch, too. The dining room made it up to 75 when I let the stove run up to the maximum safe operating temperature. Missus’ craft room and office is surprisingly warm for running one of those heat panels and the fan blowing air in from the dining room only to keep it warm. Meanwhile, I continue my temperature record watch party of one. It’s at -23. Maybe I ought to just go back to sleep if we already set the record. Nothing but boring now. What a laugh!

After 4:00Am now, and it has warmed up to -22. Still colder than yesterday. It could go either way from here, but I am going to sleep through it, whatever it does. It is time to go reclaim the joy of being in dreamland. What fun it has been to see this shocking cold! Not from out in it, mind! I am quite happy to remain here in the house!

It is coming up to 10:30AM now. It bottomed out this morning at 6:10AM at -26F. That’s a record on my weather station. Right now, I have the block heater on the tractor so I can try to use the tractor to jump start the truck. That’s how it is today. I hope we will see the temperatures warm up as the forecast predicts it will over the next few days.

Snow Handling with a Tractor

It’s two degrees above freezing outside right now, gone after 5:30 PM. This winter has been pretty warm. The snow on the ground seems wet, and we keep getting puddles then ice skating rinks all around. I plow the dog walking path, and the top has a new finish on it by morning when the flat snow has melted during the day, then iced over during the night. It’s not the safest environment to walk in. Then again, we have had worse. But as winter seasons go, this is not a cold one, for sure.

So far this year we keep getting little bits of snow. We put in the footprints, then within a few days they are gone. It snowed maybe an inch and a half last night! It was just enough to want to clear it, but not enough to change the world or end the drought. But who knows what the cumulative effect of all this snow will be? We just need it to keep coming!

I am not entirely sure that the tractor would handle a single heavy snowfall. If I had a proper snow pusher or plow blade, then yeah, I think it would do amazing things. But with a loader bucket and a box blade, it has limits to what it can move in each pass.

All the snow clearing burns fuel. The cost of fuel is not very low this year, as you know. And as it keeps falling in these little bits at a time, I get to burn plenty of fuel to keep the place clear.

Between all this, I am trying to establish a snow strategy. Where are the best places to pile it up? How much should hit the ground before I clear it up? What areas should I clear off, and what should I leave? It’s great to have a cab and be able to work any time of day or night and stay warm.

One of the things that has really paid off with the tractor though is the ability to walk around outside without being forced into little foot-made paths that weave around almost randomly. I have full walkways and plenty of room to drive vehicles around without getting stuck.

Feeding has been so much easier this year! I put a bale in the bucket and take it around to where the llamas and horse is and deliver a couple of flakes per animal. By the time I am done with the paddocks with one or two animals in each, I have a final one with three that I can just dump the rest of the hay into. It is dead easy. It means I only end up out of the tractor three times after I have loaded the hay into the bucket. And those three times are very short, and don’t really require a coat. Makes a lovely winter chore list! There are other times I am out of the tractor for longer, but for feeding the goats, and for loading firewood into the bucket to take to the house. The bucket can carry a full load for a 24-hour burn. That never takes too long, so I have hardly been cold this winter compared to previous years!

There is a lot to get doing soon. When my workbench shows up in the next week or two, and I get it set up, I expect it to increase my opportunities to work in the shop. All I need to depend on is being able to warm it in there and being able to find some wood to work with! I can sure imagine a few things to build on it! I can also image being able to clear up and do some more candles.

That’s what is on my mind right now. All that and a bag of popcorn. I think I’ll go get that popping!

Going to Get Colder!

After our previous report about the cold, today was playing out to be a mellow day when a friend of mine texted and asked if we thought we were going to be in the range of the negative temperature storm heading into the US. I had no idea what he was talking about. Then I saw two of the kids were messaging and I looked at the video one posted, and there was my answer. I think you will look back upon this as the Christmas Freeze of 2022. Whatever it gets called, it’s going to get very, very cold. We are anticipating windchills as low as -25F, and we are only going to get brushed by the arctic air as it barrels into the US from Canada in the next 48 hours or so. Wind gusts here are expected to reach 50 mph, but I will be the first to admit that the wind never reaches up to what is anticipated. I suspect based on normal weather predictions compared to reality, we will see wind gusting to 35 mph. That at about 2F is enough to still make it a hellish cold.

I spent three and a half hours today working with our animals that live outside, and prepared them with food, bedding, water, and whatever I could to keep them out of direct wind and show. We are meant to get snow starting tonight, then going on till the day after tomorrow. Again, all we can do is wait and see. But this is going to goof with a lot of people’s travel plans over Christmas, including the kid who posted the video in Messenger who has to travel back home from where he works in another state. He’s excited. He already has the record among people I know for longest commute to work, four days, when we went to work this last week. All of that was due to weather, too.

Well, it is tired time, and I am going to go to sleep. Will probably be clearing snow tomorrow afternoon, or the next morning. It’s going to be interesting!

Taking Steps Forward, and to the Side

The farrier came by this morning and give the horse a bit of a trim. We are trying to recover her hooves from a bit of neglect on our part, and she needs to be done in increments. The guy I hired has been willing to come twice on a single appointment, so I paid him more than he asked me for. He said he did not want to charge me till he had done the job right, and he felt that he was unable to the first time. Well, that was not his fault! He is going to come by again in three weeks to work her over again, which will be on a different appointment than these last visits, which were the original appointment. Anyway, the mare’s hooves are coming down, and I am glad it is not all at once, not just to let her be less tender under the hoof, but also so she can adjust her stance back to a more upright position.

After the farrier left, I had some things to take care of for Missus, then I went to town to get a new gas lid for the truck, and new coolant reservoir lid for the car as it just broke on Tuesday, and some electrical supplies to hardwire in a heater for Missus’ little cottage out back. I was almost done with that just after the sun had gone down when all the girls came into the cottage with Bandit, our half border collie, half Alsatian.

The dog had blood on him which turned out to be from his roommate, the Billy goat. The goat is rutting, and acting like a real jerk, and won himself a good bit on the ear. But then, that is not the goat’s fault. Anyway, the dog found himself a way out of the pen and took his leave from the goat in order to get some peace. I knew right away where he had done it, so I finished the wiring, put on the heater, and went after the fence.

The fence repair was one of the easiest I have done on the farm, day or night. In this case, it was night. But I picked up the roll of fencing and brought it over on the pallet forks of the tractor, measured off a piece as if I were measuring off some paper towel, and then used the lights on the tractor to illuminate my work! The light was coming from behind me, so the goat and I cast shadows, which I watched to make sure the goat was not charging me the way he has been the dog. I finished fixing the fence, and am secure the goat isn’t getting out, and I put the dog elsewhere for the night. I will have to get some fence supplies tomorrow and build a new pen, I think. It’s time that goat got his own place again and stopped pestering the poor dog. They were okay together for a while, but the goat’s tongue has been hanging out and flapping. He is in a mood.

Tomorrow I would like to put the new heater into my shop, too. I have what I need to do it. If I don’t quite get to the new pen, I am okay with that as I have an auger on the way, and would like to set posts with it, since the ground is already frozen up to a degree here. The auger should be here on Monday or Tuesday. It would be good for it to arrive first, so I can not only get into the ground as necessary, but also get in deep enough to set the posts in properly. All of my posts up till now are set to shallow as I cannot get the manual post hole diggers to clasp any dirt beyond about two and a half feet down. The handles won’t spread enough, and I don’t want to dig the hole any wider so the earth around the hole is undisturbed and firm. The auger ought to make a big difference in getting deep enough, keeping the surrounding ground firm, and just plain being easier. It should also help me to reset several fences around here and set in the new paddocks whenever the canal company buries the canal. I will probably set in small shelters with it, too. Oh, and I could use a couple of woodsheds.

Everything is under control on the farm again, for now. Slowly, we are improving things, too. It’s good to feel the progress!