The last of the wood, we hope...

This is how our lives work...opportunity knocks on the door and says "this is going to be great!".  We go for it and then opportunity adds all the conditions and problems.  This iteration of opportunity knocking went something like this:

Our sawmiller in Colorado, Joel, wanted a semi load of insulated garage door sections from where I work.  Conveniently enough, he also had all of the logs milled that we had dropped off when we went to Colorado last.  Hmmm....opportunity said, "You could load the lumber on the trailer and just pay for the back haul and save all that time driving to Colorado!"  Given that there were at least 3 trips worth of lumber waiting for us, this sounded like a great deal, so we made the necessary arrangements.

The semi was originally scheduled to arrive Friday afternoon and we prepared accordingly.  Then we got word on Thursday that the unload and reload in Colorado had taken longer than planned by quite a bit (I have no details about that end of the story, but given what happened on our end I think I can piece it together).  The delivery was moved to Saturday morning between 8:00-9:00AM.  Perfect.  We got an extra day to plan, the weather was predicted to be better and more people were able to come help out.  We start thinking that this is all working out pretty well!

On Thursday afternoon, Jeremy and I scavenged some long pallets from work to stack the wood on.  Friday afternoon, Jeremy and some friends set them up and leveled them behind our shed.

Saturday, we're at the farm about 7:30AM cutting stickers to be able to stack the wood up as we unload it by the house site so that we don't have to touch it again until we're ready to build with it.  We also utilized our volunteers (aka Amazing friends that we wouldn't know what to do without) to move a piece of the old greenhouse plastic up to the top of the hill so that we could cover up the stacks of lumber for the winter.  We were ready to go at 9:00 when the truck arrived.

Semi making its way up the drive

 

Everything is ready to go at the top of the hill

All is well with the world as the truck makes its way slowly up the driveway.  Then it gets to the bend, the icy bend, and the trailer slips off the road and the tires start spinning.  Crap. 

Semi is off the driveway

The driver explains how he doesn't think chains would be helpful and that he thinks he can back it back down the drive for another try.  He starts up, gets going and slides farther off the road.  He also managed to back the back of the trailer into the ditch on the passenger side.  At this point, he can't go anywhere because the trailer foot is high centered on our (frozen) driveway.  Double crap.

Semi is farther off the drive.  Note the location of the back trailer wheels, the high point under the trailer foot and the general air of "oh crap" felt by all. 

After much debate and some miscellaneous efforts to get traction for the semi, we start unloading the wood.  The theory is that with the trailer being lighter, it will be easier to unstick the trailer foot.  We moved 3 pallets down from the top of the hill that we hadn't used and set them up on the high side of the ditch.  About this time, the sun had come out and started melting the remaining snow and ice.  This made our ditch a mud pit that was wicked slippery.  First, we unloaded a stack of 1.75" thick boards into our trailer.  This wasn't as bad since our truck and trailer were on the drive and we could pull boards from the driveway side of the semi.

Jeremy, Daniel, Doug and I carry boards from the big trailer to our trailer.  The kids and Robyn hand boards out to us from inside the trailer.

Then we unloaded a BUNCH of 1" boards onto the first pallet on the uphill side of the ditch (in case the semi needed the grassy downhill side to get out).  Then came the first round of timbers.  Getting these out of the trailer was the amazing work of our friend Daniel.  He drug them to the back of the trailer and pushed them out as Jeremy, Robyn, I and Doug positioned ourselves under it so that it would rest on our shoulders to be carried to the waiting pallet.  Here is where another friend (Doug) saved the day.  He brought a pile of pit fines (which is a very find gravel mixed with limestone powder).  After the first timber, Jeremy slipped and fell in the mud.  No good.  So we shoveled some steps in the ditch bank and spread the pit fines on it.  Woot!  Traction!  The rest of the timbers were unloaded with nothing more eventful that exhausted people.

2 stacks of wood unloaded by the side of our ditch.  Note the white pit fines next to the pile for traction.

Unfortunately, this left us with 2 stacks of wood in the trailer and a still stuck semi.  Thinking that the lighter trailer might be more amenable to moving, we made another attempt to pull the trailer out of the ditch with the semi.  No dice.  Time to call for help!  We paid a visit to our amazing neighbors, the Jameson's, who happen to own a very large tractor.  I pleaded our case and they very graciously came to our rescue.  With their tractor chained to the semi in front, we were able to pull the trailer out of the ditch.  Then it was just a matter of pulling the whole rig down the drive until the semi wheels were also on gravel (instead of the newly created mud pit that was our north field). 

Jeremy holding the chains for the tractor.

With that accomplished, the driver was able to back the trailer all the way down to the bottom of the drive where we unloaded the last of the wood.  Our neighbor's son, Landon was incredible - he not only brought the tractor and expertly operated it, he helped with the unload!  We'd have been sunk without him.  We can't say enough good things about our neighbors! 

The other 2 stacks.  Note the deep ruts - that was the mostly unloaded trailer.  It was lovely to slog around it.

Now for the moment of truth - could the semi pull out through the mud and back onto the road?

Jeremy, Chris (the semi driver) and Landon (our neighbor) in front of the semi after it successfully pulled out onto the road (note the tractor waiting to assist if needed).

Victory!  Kinda.  Now we come back to the moral of the opportunity story.  We did manage to get all the lumber to Kansas for about the same as what we would have paid in gas (even including the extra time we have to pay for because the semi was at our place an extra 4 hours).  However, we now have several tons of wood scattered around the property and none of it is a)where its supposed to be nor b)stickered appropriately to be able to stay where it is.  We will be moving all of this wood again and stacking it correctly over the next week or two.  Why move something once when 3 times will do? 

On the upside, this should be enough to complete the house and a potential future addition (or another outbuilding).  In the course of moving every board, I can also say with certainty that there is beautiful lumber here.  We shouldn't need to haul any more for a very long time.  At least until opportunity knocks again...

2012 wrap up

In the spirit of the new year, I thought I'd take a minute to look back and what 2012 has brought our family.  It was quite a year!

• Dismantled and moved two 96' long hoop houses in January
• Found our 40 acres in February
• Closed on the farm in April
• Removed our city garden in May
• Purchased an RV and moved it to the farm
• Got the tractor running!
• Built the first hoop house on the farm in June/July
• Purchased, stacked, restacked and stored 200+ straw bales for a house
• Made 3 trips to Colorado to pick up logs and milled lumber
• Milled many logs at Tim O'brien's
• Cut and brought home cedar logs from Arkansas
• Found and moved 16 tons of rock (with much more of this to come)
• Transplanted many plants from town to the farm
• Planted first 12 fruit trees on the farm
• Had Bowen excavation level the pad for the second hoop house
• Moved into and out of 2 storage units
• Put the house on the market FSBO, listed it with a real estate agent and then took it off the market

That's quite a lot when you consider that we both have jobs, we have 2 kids with their own activities and we do sleep occasionally.  Here's hoping that 2013 will be just as productive!

Logging again

Never ones to take a long weekend totally off, we did some work over Thanksgiving weekend.  We were in Arkansas near my grandparents farm that my uncle now owns and operates.  We've been looking for timber sized cedar trees to use for the sills of the house and greenhouse and my uncle, Dwayne, had some he wanted cut out of his field - a match made in heaven!  We spent most of Friday and some of Saturday morning turning 6 trees into 6 logs and loading them on our trailer.

First the felling.  Most of the trees came down without a lot of fuss, but there was one exception.  This one took no less than 2 chain saws (it pinched one of them), 2 wedges, an axe and a rope to get down. 

It doesn't look any different from the rest...

Its cut almost all the way through and won't fall.  Lets pull this way

How about we pull this way?

Dang.  How is that tree still standing?

Finally... Down!

Once the trees were on the ground, we had to cut the limbs and tops off the trunks. Some of these are LOGS!

Felling and limbing 6 trees is hard work.  Time to go home.

By the end of Friday, we had all the logs cut and drug up together by the gate (we couldn't drive the truck and trailer into the field where the trees were).

The logs.

Saturday morning, Dwayne used his tractor to help us lift and manuever the logs onto the trailer. We missed having Jeremy's grandpa's skid steer, but the tractor was light years better than loading them by hand! Did I mention that some of these were big?

The biggest logs were lifted on one end by the tractor...

Then we backed the trailer under them....

Then we chained and lifted the other end and backed the trailer the rest of the way to load them.

Unfortunately, while loading them we discovered that one of the biggest logs had a rotten spot all the way through the middle and one of the smaller ones was bent enough that we weren't going to get the timber we need out of it. This required pulling the big one back off the trailer and leaving the little one in the field. We'll come back another time with the chainsaw mill an get some boards out of them, but we didn't want to haul them back with this load if they weren't going to work for the house. There was enough weight on this trailer as it was!

Did you see the bad spot in the log on the right?  Crap.  Time to unload it...

Dragging the next log to the trailer

We got back to Lawrence on Sunday afternoon and took the logs to Tim's (the miller) on Monday morning. Unloading went as smoothly as ever and the logs will wait at Tim's until a reasonable day when we have some time free to go turn them into posts and boards.

Unloading with the bobcat.

 

Moving the last log into the pile.

 

Planning and putting the garden to bed

We had a pleasant afternoon at the farm today.  It was a beautiful day.  We took the opportunity to clean up the garden from the frost.  There were lots of cantaloupe vines and partially ripened melons to add to the compost along with tomato vines and sweet potato vines.  We had hoped that the sweet potatoes would have had enough time to make a few decent roots, but there weren't really any to speak of.  That said, they made a good amoung of material for the compost pile.

Many lost melons and sweet potato vines

 

We had planned to plow a swale above the greenhouse, but the tractor had other plans.  The front tire is now flat and won't hold air.  We'll get to make a trip to pick up the tractor on our new trailer and tow it down to the tire shop to have the tire fixed.  *sigh*  

Flat tire!

We took some more time to walk the farm and narrow in on exact placements for future buildings.  Our mental plan for the farm continues to take shape and its going to be awesome!

Grape Swales and a good weekend

This weekend was a good blend of socializing and productivity.  We managed to get most of the second storage unit cleaned out - the last of it will probably move early this week.  We also plowed the 3 swales for our future grape vines.  I was able to create the swale for one of the three before my left arm got completely exhausted (my right is still recovering, so I wasn't using it). 

Jeremy doing the second pass on the first row

The top 2 swales.  The left one has been dug out already.

Each swale was made by doing 2 passes with the plow along a contour line so that the entire row should be at basically the same elevation.  The swale should capture runoff and focus the water at the base of the grape vines so that they will be better able to survive long dry spells without irrigation.  Eventually, we'll put up our grape trellises along the trenches and then we'll plant our grape vines.



This weekend was also the 75th anniversary of the Hobbit's first printing.  In honor of the event (and as an excuse to have a get together), we had brunch at our house on Saturday.  The buffet included 2 kinds of bread pudding, shephard's pie, cherry pie, lemon cake, seed cakes, banana cake, banana bread, candied bacon, scrambled eggs, fried eggs, and some other stuff.  Needless to say, everyone had plenty to eat!  Good food and good friends - who could ask for more on a Saturday morning?

More groundwork for the greenhouse

Today we got up at the unpleasant hour of 5:00 so that we could work before the heat of the day today (predicted high 104).  We were around with breakfast, supplies and lunch and at the farm at 7:00AM.  Once there, we were joined by friends from church - Julie and her daughters Jessie and Ellie.  Their help was very much appreciated!

Catherine and Ellie helping remove rocks

First, Jeremy and Jacob measured how far out of level our existing pad was.  It turns out it was a bit more than we really wanted, so Jeremy started the tractor up and we did some more leveling.  We learned some key things during the process of taking the back, North edge down another foot or so.  Namely, sooner or later when you cut into a hill, you're going to hit rocks.  Big ones.  Rocks that don't really want to go anywhere.

Getting to be experts at switching implements on the tractor....

This rock took the tractor to dig it out and all 3 adults to lift it out of the greenhouse

Thankfully, between Julie and I working with the shovel and the tractor, we were able to remove the offending rocks. Someday perhaps they'll make their way into a foundation somewhere...

Julie and I surveying the newly staked corners

We also did a little bit of mowing with the scythe while the tractor was doing its work.  Julie got pretty proficient with the tool and we managed to clear out some more next to our drive.  I also got to peen the scythe for the first time!  It turned out to be pretty painless and it definitely improved the performance of the blade.  I suspect that I will need to get even better at it to effectively cut grass someday, but it was a good start.

After the pad was re-leveled, we had lunch together before moving on to the next thing on the list - staking out the true corners for the greenhouse.  This required much measuring and adjusting of stakes, but eventually we got it done.  Then we lined up the hoops for the greenhouse to get them ready to bolt together.  At this point it was 1:30 and getting HOT!  We decided to pack up and head home for some A/C.  Not a bad 5 or so hours work for the day.

Daisy decided that under the picnic table was the place to be

The newly re-leveled pad

Leveling for the greenhouse

The pad is level!!!!  Now that I've answered your first question, here's how it happened...

Friday evening, we hitched the plow up to the tractor for the first time to besure we had all the right hardware to make it work (we did).  The plan was to use the plow to break up the soil so that we could use the box blade to level teh site for the first greenhouse.  We were planning on this taking all day on Saturday and likely some time on Sunday.

Once the plow was attached, we couldn't resist trying it out, so Jeremy drove over to the staked out site of the greenhouse and started plowing.  We quickly discovered that we had the plow set too dep when the tractor started bucking like a bronco - funny to those watching, not so funny to the guy riding the tractor.  Once that was fixed the plow worked like a dream.  The earth turned over in 2 neat rows behind the tractor; loose, dark and rich.

We plowed the first layer to be moved before proceeding to the RV to make camp for the night.  When we got to the RV, we had an unfortunate surprise.  Either we forgot to unhook the battery before we left or someone hooked it up while we were gone resulting in the battery being completely drained.  This meant that not only was the battery ruined, but we couldn't open the slide out on the RV.  Big frowny face here.

Nevertheless, we made camp, had some dinner and passed out for the evening.  It was a great night - gentle cool breeze and the sounds of the country.

First thing Saturday morning (and I mean first thing - we were up and around at 6:00), we were back at it.  We were hurried along by some very ominous looking storm clouds complete with thunder and lightning.  We would celebrate the rain, but we also wanted to get this job done!

The combination of plow and box blade worked fantastically well.  It took about 5-6 hours on the tractor to get the stie leveled with several rounds fo swapping between the 2 implements.  We learned several key things during this effort including:

- How not to kill the tractor when it bogs down
-That our soil is AWESOME for the top 4-6 inches
- That we need a stronger block to hold up the box blade (see picture)

We had a lot of fun Saturday too.  Friends of ours, Jessi Asmussen and Kevin Prather, and their little boy Elliot visited in teh morning and we all took a walk around the farm.  It was wonderful to spend time together!

The kids and I got to be weights on the box blade to help it dig in a little deeper which was fun.  The kids particularly enjoyed this job.

While Jeremy ran the tractor, I set up a new, larger pen for the goats.  We're upgrading them to a 16'x32' pen so that we won't have to move them as often and so that they'll have mor eroom to run around.  Setting T posts is a really good shoulder workout, in case you're wondering!

We finished up about 6:00 PM, broke camp and we were home about 7:00.  We were all hot, sweaty and glad to have the job done!

Sunday, we went to the pool (in case you're thinking we really do just work all the time).  Ahhhhhh.

Tractor - oil and hydraulics update

We’re moving along.  Yesterday, Jeremy successfully finished changing and flushing the oil and hydraulic fluid resulting in much better hydraulic pressure on the tractor.  Along the way he replaced several gaskets and filters.  We continue to find that parts for this wonderful old tractor of ours are cheap and easy to replace!  Woo hoo! 

We also discovered in doing our research that not only do we have a short in the tractor's electrical system that is cooking batteries, but we need to stop jumping it with a 12 volt battery (i.e. the truck) because that messes up the charge regulator.  The tractor uses a 6V battery, you see.  Not quite sure how we'll do that - it will probably involve buying some piece of equipment to charge batteries that can do 6V.  Until then, we'll continue with what we're doing and know that when we find the short and fix it, we will be replacing both the battery and charge regulator.  Luckily, we can keep going like we are so this isn't a fix we have to do before we can continue with the work. 

Our next task is getting the plow put back together.  Hopefully this will just entail replacing the bolt that is broken.  Given that the bolt in question looks impressively rusted, we'll see if that turns out to be as simple as we hope.

Once the plow is in operable order, we get to sit back and hope to goodness it actually rains!  That would make leveling the site SOOOOOO much easier.  It would also be a welcome relief from the unseasonably dry hot weather.  Everybody cross your fingers for water falling from the sky!

At home, there is a fair bit of grass coming up around the place.  We are having to water sometimes twice a day to keep the fledgling grass growing.  It is amazing how something as useless as grass can take several times over the water that our garden did.  *sigh* 

I promise that pictures will be forthcoming - the camera has been left at home for the last 2 trips out to the farm unfortunately.  One day we'll remember.

Laying Ground Work

After a restful weekend visiting family in Oklahoma and Arkansas, we’re back at it.  We have to get the first hoop house up as soon as possible so that we can get the straw out of the farmer’s barn.  To that end, we met with an excavating company last week and discovered that having the pad leveled for the greenhouse would cost us $1500.  Ouch.  So we’re going to take a run at it ourselves again. 

Our plan is to use the plow that came with the tractor to break up the soil a layer at a time on the high side of the site.  Then we’ll use the box blade to move the loosened soil over to the low side.  It will take several passes to get the site leveled, but we think it’s do-able. 

In order to make that happen, we have to get the plow in good working order and finish the tune-up of the tractor.  This means changing out some very rusted hardware on the plow (and maybe the tractor), changing the oil in the tractor (a 2 day process) and figuring out how to use the plow.  With a little luck and some work, that will all get finished before the weekend.  Then we’ll camp out at the farm this weekend again and get the site leveled.  If that miraculously goes well (fat chance, but good to dream), then we’ll start laying out where the poles go early next week.

The first step in this process happened yesterday.  Unfortunately, Jeremy didn’t have the camera with him, so no pictures.  Sorry.  The oil that drained out of the tractor was a lovely shade of pitch black and had the stuff in it you would expect from oil and hydraulic fluid that had been in an engine for at least 25 years.  We flushed the hydraulic system out and it is now draining overnight to be sure we get all the fluid out before putting the new oil in.  Interestingly enough, hydraulic fluid used on this tractor is not standard hydraulic fluid.  It is actually 90 weight mineral oil!  We were surprised to learn that.  Sometime today, Jeremy will re-fill the fluid and the engine oil and we’ll see if the tractor will start back up again.

As a bonus, we discovered that there is some kind of short in the electrical system which has already fried the battery we purchased last week.  *sad*  We’ll be trouble shooting that this week also.  Until we find the short, we’re back to jumping the tractor every time we want to use it. 

Assuming we get all the maintenance done and the pad leveled this weekend, there will be a hoop-house raising party on Saturday June 30^th.  If we don’t get the pad leveled this weekend, then the hoop house raising will be delayed for some period of time while we figure out plan B.  So, if you are someone or know someone who would be interested in helping to erect a hoop house, please check back or email us (jajlehrman *at* yahoo.com) to find out if it’s a go or not.  We should know by Monday one way or the other.    Until then, we’ll be spending quality time with the tractor…

Tractor Part 2

We are learning that everything takes at least twice as long as we think it will – especially if it involves a large piece of equipment.  After our 1945 Ford 2N tractor started and ran with really very little effort on Wednesday evening, we were excited to get it out to the farm (and off the driveway) so that we could take advantage of its mechanical advantage.  There were a few things that needed to happen first though.  The front right tire wasn’t holding air and was visibly very worn out and the battery was quite dead (it was stamped 1980). 

This was the plan:  Get up Friday morning, pick up the trailer from Sunflower Rental, load the tractor, go by the tire shop and then stop by Lawrence Battery for a new battery.  We had high hopes to be done with that by noon so that we could play around with the tractor a little before going to pick up the kids in Emporia at 3:30.  Needless to say, that isn’t quite what happened!  ;-)

We got around a little bit late on Friday morning after being up late several nights last week, so Jeremy got underway to pick up the trailer about 8:30 or so.  Our neighbor who helped us get it running on Wednesday recommended a tire place – K’s tires – and we called to see if they had a correctly sized tire in stock.  They did and since the trailer was at our house and the tractor already ran, I told them we’d be there in about half an hour.  Everything was moving along more or less as planned.

As I walked out of the house from talking to the tire shop, I saw our neighbor doing some general preventative maintenance on the tractor.  He and Jeremy were cleaning out the glass sediment bulb where stuff in the gas tank settles out instead of going through the engine.  It was completely full of rust and gunk – it was a wonder the thing started at all.  Then, just before putting it back on the tractor, Ralph dropped it on the driveway.  Being glass, it shattered into 100 pieces.  Great.  We had a new errand to run to Kaw Valley Industrial to purchase a new bulb, gasket and filter.  That took 20 minutes or so but only cost $8.50.  Upon my return with the parts, we got the tractor put back together and jumped it off the Honda.  It loaded up into the trailer with no real issues other than arranging the box blade on the back so that the ramps could fit around it.  Off to K’s Tires!

Loaded and ready to go....finally.

We pulled up to the shop with the tractor on the trailer and walked in to the office.  After identifying ourselves as the people who thought they’d be there about an hour ago, the shop owner (K) casually said – “No problem, just pull the tractor up to the 3^rd bay.”  We then had to explain that in order to move the tractor, we had to jump it.  Without missing a beat, he said – “No problem, I’ll pull my truck over.”  The second truck was pulled over to our trailer and we successfully jumped the tractor with a little fiddling (apparently fiddling is required in order to get a tractor to do anything, so we’re adjusting to this reality).  The gentleman who changed the tires for us was very friendly although less than enthused about changing rusty tractor tires (he had to angle grind on the rims a bit so that the new tire could make a seal).  He got them changed in about an hour including the jumping time.  Having never been to K’s Tires, I would have to recommend them to anyone.  They were very helpful in every way.  Then we were off to Lawrence Battery!

This was the only uneventful stop of the morning.  We pulled up, they pulled the old battery, put new terminals on the cables (they had corroded to the point that one broke off when it was removed from the other battery), and put in a new battery.  We test started the tractor and it cranked right over with the usually fiddling and no jumper cables!  The tractor was now cleared for field work.  Off to the farm!

Lawrence Battery technician fixing the terminals

You can't tell in the picture, but the tractor is running here for the first time without being jumped!

We arrived at the farm around 2:00.  The tractor started up again with the usual fiddling and Jeremy drove it off the trailer with nothing interesting happening at all.  He then drove it to the greenhouse site and started testing out using the box blade to level the soil.  It was unfortunately not a very successful exercise.  The ground was so dry that the blade couldn’t really bite into at all.  The two foot tall woody vegetation didn’t help either.  We made a mental note that we needed to water the ground before working to level it on Saturday – no worries there since we’d been watering our whole lot for weeks.  What’s another hour or so with a sprinkler?  Next it was time to take the now empty trailer back to Sunflower. 

We parked the trailer in their lot where it had been and Jeremy went in to pay.  I didn’t want to sit in the truck, so I unhitched the trailer and put Sunflowers chain, boomer and ball that we had rented on the trailer before I went in to see what was keeping Jeremy.  For the first time in all the times we have rented from Sunflower, there was a line.  He had finally made it up to the next position when I came in.  Eventually, we settled up and were on our way home at 3:15

It was pretty obvious we were not going to be on time to pick up the kids in Emporia at 5:00 since we needed to shower before we went out in the general public.  A quick phone call to Jeremy’s folks and the time was changed to 5:15.  That trip was also blissfully uneventful and everyone was home safely by 8:00.  What a day!

Our weekend camping at the farm was also very successful in a bunch of completely unplanned ways, so check back to hear about that!

It lives!

Most of you will know that we have had an old ford tractor sitting on our driveway for about 3 years.  Last night we decided it was finally time to start the work of getting it running again so that we can use it on the farm but first a bit of background.

This style of tractor (the Ford N series – 2N, 8N and 9N) was the most popular tractor in America when it came out.  Shockingly, about 60% of the tractors sold back then (1940’s – 1960’s) are still running somewhere.  The reason is that these machines are so simple there’s just almost nothing that breaks on them!  They are also designed so that an average person can work on them.

Isn't she pretty? 

Ours came from Jeremy grandfather by way of Jeremy’s uncle and is a 1945 Ford 2N (the oldest version of these tractors) making it now 67 years old.  In 1984, Jeremy’s grandpa bought 2 of these tractors.  He took the attachments he wanted and the newer of the two out to Colorado with him when he retired and left the other tractor and unwanted attachments in Kansas on his son Rob’s farm.  Uncle Rob used the tractor once in a great while, so it mostly spent the next 15 years sitting exposed in a field.  When we bought land in Arkansas and were talking about wanting something that we could leave down there to brush hog with, Jeremy’s grandfather, Ott, said we could have this tractor.  We were told at the time that it has a crack in the block that “seals up once she gets warm”, that it needed a new battery and that it needed new front tires.  In the process of loading and unloading it, we also determined that it needed new brakes. 

The list of things to fix and the fact that Jeremy broke his foot on it bringing it home, meant that we felt this was a big job requiring some serious time commitment.  Sufficed to say, we didn’t find the time until now.  When we started working on it about 7:30 last night, we expected to get the tires aired up (to see how bad the leaks are) and maybe get it to turn over if we could successfully jump it from our truck (a simple car battery doesn’t have the juice to jump the tractor). 

Old farmer teaching us about our old tractor

We borrowed an air compressor from our neighbor and hit the gold mine.  It turns out that our neighbor, Ralph, spent a healthy portion of his younger life driving and working on ford tractors.  He came over to help us set up the air compressor and it was like watching an artist with their chosen media.  He leaned over and adjusted this knob, turned this under the hood, put this here, directed us in a few things to help and in about 5 minutes the old tractor was running on the driveway!  We couldn’t believe it.  It literally just took putting air in the tires and jumping the battery and she was ready to go.  Also, the thing with the brakes turned out to be that the right brakes were just locked up.  Apparently WD40 fixes that so no need to fix the brakes.

Tractor on life support

We drove it down the driveway to make it easier to load tomorrow and take out to the farm and sat back to marvel and this little tractor.  Our neighbor also kindly offered to come out to the farm with us on Friday and help us get comfortable with driving it and using the implements we have (blade and a 2 bottom plow).  We will need to get a new battery (this one can be jumped but doesn’t hold a charge) and add some hydraulic fluid before she’s running great, but we now have a working tractor!  If we’d known it was that easy, we would have used it to clear the roads of all the snow 2 winters ago. 

So now we can add “tractor” to the list of old tools we are ready to use on our farm.  With a little luck, this old guy will help us do a lot of work this weekend.