Hunting Story (Humor)

I'm a hunt-a-holic...

I scouted the area all summer. . .

I searched out the best location for my tree-stand . . ...

I set it all up a month ahead of time . . .

I trailed the herd . . .

I picked out a trophy buck .. ..

Two days before opening day I rechecked every aspect of the hunt . ..

Everything was in place . . ..

Sunday morning, I woke up at 2 am . .. .

I put on my camo, loaded my pack, set out for my stand . . .

This was destined to be an epic hunt . . ..

As I approached my deer stand ...
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 I decided to go back home and go to church, instead...

It's interesting what brings a person back to the faith...

Old Iron II

A little Allis Chalmers--notice the hand crank.

 Some more pictures of tractors from Monticello...

An "eyebrow" Case--so called because of the hoods above the headlites.

Another view of the Case.

An older Case with LPG fueled engine.  Again a hand-crank.

Rear view of the Case. A PTO, but no 3-point hitch.

Another old Case and another hand crank.

A newer Case row tractor, with military tire on the front.

An eclectic mix--Cases, John Deeres, Farmalls

A Farmall row crop tractor

Another Farmall row crop.  The "tricycle" wheels rode the furrows between rows.

A Ford Super Major Diesel--there were only 2 or 3 Fords in the whole mix.

Another view of the Ford

A nice little Farmall Cub Lo-Boy

Looks kinda puny next to the "grown up" tractors

Two Farmalls and a John Deere

Rear of the LPG Farmall

Farmalls, Cases and John Deeres seem to be the most popular.

Here's a good website with information and parts for older tractors:

Yesterday's Tractors

And here's a good site for specs on all types of tractors--from garden tractors to farm, to industrial. They have almost 9,000 different models listed:

Tractor Data.com

Thanks to All for Your Comments

I appreciate all of you that have commented on my blog.  I've tried several times to reply, but for some reason when I type something into the reply box and hit "Comment" it just disappears somewhere in cyber space.

So, I'll put my comments here:

Thanks to all for your compliments... my wife is really the one with the green thumb.  I just try to find easier ways to make things work, whether it's plants, cars, or whatever. I do have to say she was a little skeptical about me building the furrower... not that she doubts my mechanical skills, but my "projects" take on the proportions of painting the Sistine Chapel at times.

Anyway, I put the furrower together in a day and we used it that evening... she was very pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to get the garden plot furrowed and ready to plant...

I'm excited now... I just need to buy the turning disks to push the edges of the furrow up around the plants, and also a middlebuster so I can harvest them this fall...  This has led me to consider planting carrots as well... I love fresh carrots, or even cooked ones, if they're left just slightly crisp...

Thanks again for your comments.

Smitty

SIMPLE TIP: Easy Oil Drain for Small Engines

I have several garden tractors, plus a tiller, a couple snowblowers, a lawnmower and a generator. 

I try to change the oil regularly--most small engines don't have oil filters, so the oil get's dirty quick.  Plus, on air-cooled engines the oil splashing througout the engine picks up heat and carries it to the pan where it can cool down some. I want them to last as long as possible, so I do the oil change thing on everything AT LEAST once a season, and more often if need be. 

Problem is, many garden tractors, tillers, etc. have low clearances or small spaces underneath and it's hard to get something to collect the oil as it drains...no, letting it run down the driveway is not an acceptable alternative!!

I finally hit on the idea while working on my Sears GT18--the one in I'm plowing with in previous posts.

I buy my oil in bulk, so I often have empty one gallon jugs available.  I normally use them to take the used oil to Auto Zone or O'Reilly's for recycling.

Most small engines only take 1 to 2 quarts of oil, so a one gallon (4 quart) jug is the perfect size.  Emptying a couple quarts into it still leaves enough space to help avoid splashing the oil out when you move it.

I took one of the jugs, and cut a square hole in the middle of it--try to round the corners if possible. I left the cap on--when you get to your collection barrel or jug, you can carefully remove the cap and pour the oil into it.

 I tried to avoid cutting all the way to the edge for a couple reasons:

1. The jug is stronger and won't twist in your hands if you leave about a 1" rim around the opening.

2. The oil tends to splash around when you have to move the jug.  Leaving the edges on causes the oil to roll back into the jug instead of down the outside and onto your hands or whatever it's sitting on.

I used the jug shown to drain the transmission from a Troy-bilt tiller that I was repairing.  Even with the limited height and the narrow distance between the wheels, it fit it like it was made for it.

I drained 3 quarts into the jug, and was still able to move it without spilling any...

This is helpful for draining other liquids as well, like brake fluid, power steeing fluid, etc. 

ONE CAUTION: Don't use old antifreeze jugs for anything but antifreeze.  Oil recycling centers will not accept oil that has antifreeze mixed into it. 

Also, Antifreeze is very poisonous, plus it has a sweet taste that draws animals.  They only need to drink a small amount to cause an excruciating death due to kidney failure...

Anyway, there's your tip...hope it's useful.

Until later,

Smitty

     

Finally Got Something Planted in My Garden!!

Utah weather is very "diverse".  We have a saying, "If you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes... it'll change".  I've literally seen all 4 seasons in one day this spring.

The unsettled weather has made it hard for me to get out and get some of my projects done--not to mention that my garage is so full of "stuff" that I can't pull even a rototiller into it to work out of the weather.

At any rate, we've had good weather the last couple weekends so I made good use of it. A couple from our church have a large plot of ground that they garden on, and they graciously allowed us to use part of it. I plowed up a section 45 feet wide by 55 feet long last fall. Our friend spread some bovine fertilizer on it and disked it for me this spring so the dirt was ready for planting. Here's a picture of me plowing last fall:

 

Our garden plot at home is fairly small, so I wanted to use this new plot for something I've never grown before--potatoes.  We also planned to put some squash there. When we plant squash in our garden at the house it is very rude to its neighbors--crowding it out and even running out into the lawn.

One year it even got up into the plum tree "hedge" between me and my neighbors. Another neighbor noticed a two foot long banana squash in the tree and asked me what kind of tree it was!!!

Anyway, I digress...

I read up a lot on how to plant potatoes (isn't the Internet wonderful??!!). The common thread of everything I read was that you wanted to plant them about 16 to 18 inches apart in hills with a furrow between the hills. After the plants come up, you need to put more dirt from the furrows up around the base of the plants since some of the potatoes tended to push out of the dirt and would go green from the sun.

Potatoes, along with tomatoes and eggplant, belong to the nightshade family.  The green color in a potato is poisonous and shouldn't be eaten--ditto with the stems, leaves and roots of all the above (the potato itself is a tuber and not a root). 

I could see that this would be a lot of work if done only with a hoe--making the initial furrows, then "hilling" them, and, when ready to harvest, digging them out with a shovel.

All of the articles I read used a furrowing attachment on a tractor. This ranged from the little garden tractors like Cub Cadets and John Deeres up to full-sized machines.  The furrower consists of a bar with two or more V-shaped blades set an equal distance apart from each other. It is pulled through the soil and cuts a small trench with the loosened soil cast up on either side of it. You place the seeds in the trench, then cover it over. Once the ground is furrowed, you simply put your seeds in at the recommended spacing then cover it over.

You can manually cover the seeds with a rake or hoe, or you can use the furrower bar with a couple of large disks angled towards each other.  The tractor straddles the hill and pulls the disks along it.  They cover the furrow back over, saving a lot of work.  The disks can also be adjusted to cast up soil around the base of the growing plants.  This keeps the potatoes from greening and also leaves a channel on either side for watering.

Here's what I came up with:

Here's another view:

 
It does a good job, too.  I furrowed our 45' x 55' garden plot and my wife and I planted 25 lbs of potatoes in under an hour.

We can dig up the potatoes we want for summertime cooking with a shovel. When it comes time for the harvest, though, I'll use a potato plow--basically a wide flared blade on a shank that goes into the ground under the potatoes and brings them up to the surface as it's pulled through the row.  Sure beats shoveling!!

Until later,

Smitty

SIMPLE TIP: RESIZING U-BOLTS

This weekend was very busy.  I've spent previous weekends helping neighbors and repairing my truck, and I haven't been able to get my own garden ready.

One of the things I needed was an attachment for my garden tractor that would create V-shaped furrows so I could plant seeds like squash, potatoes, etc.

While making the furrower, I needed a U-Bolt that would hold a 1" diameter cultivator shank.  The local hardware store--Dallas Green Farm Supply, had them, but they were only 1/4" diameter material and I didn't think that would be strong enough.

The store also had slightly larger U-bolts made with 5/16" material. That was more like I wanted, but you want to have as much of the bolt touching the shank as possible to grip it better.

So, how could I make the U-bolt smaller?

In the past, I've put the closed end of the bolt in a vise and tightened it down.  This makes it smaller, but also causes the open end of the bolt to push in towards each other.  You're then faced with the problem of opening the bolt up again, and generally end up with something like an oversize Bobby-pin (do people even know what a Bobby-pin is these days???) You also risk damaging the threads so you can't screw the nut back on the bolt.

As often happens when I'm pondering a problem, I had a sudden flash of inspiration--when I squeezed the bolt together, if I put a spacer at the open end of the desired width, it would hold it open.

The U-bolts come with a metal plate with elongated holes.  The original width was 1 3/8", but the slots in the plate were 1 1/8" at the narrow side.

I screwed the nuts on to each side of the U-Bolt down to the end of the threads.  This serves two purposes--First, if the threads become damaged, you can screw the nut off and straighten them out; and Second, you can actually grip the bolt on the nuts. Gripping on the rounded U-bolt shanks themselves can result in them twisting and flying out of the vise when you squeeze it down.

Next I put the plate on, then another nut to hold the plate in place.  I ended up with something like this:

I then tightened the vise, checked the inside dimension, and tightened and checked until it was where I wanted it--in this case 1 1/8".

If you need a different size than the plate allows, drill your own out of bar stock or some other piece of metal.  I would recommend at least 1/8" thick material, and make the holes at least 1/16"  larger diameter than the bolt thread diameter.

Obviously this will only work on smaller U-bolts--up to about 3/8" diameter thread.

You could also use this a technique and a hammer if you don't have a vise handy. Use a pair of Vise-Grip pliers to hold the bolt, or you can crush some fingers.



FWIW,

Smitty

U-bolts