The round bales we bought are really tight and it got to be hard to pull hay off as I got in to the center of it.  I worked for a long time with a pick axe and a long barbell pole trying to break it apart, but it just wouldn’t give.  I got two big hooks on a chain at an auction or some place a while back, so I dug them in as deep as I could and pulled them out with my tractor.  The hooks pulled out the first time, but on the second try, it pulled the core of the bail neatly out and now I can easily pull out large hunks of hay to throw in the 4 wheeler cart to bring to the horses.

The plants we planted yesterday don’t look so good, and we don’t know why.  The stems are still looking okay, but the leaves are shriveled and/or brown.  It’s almost like they froze, but it didn’t get below freezing last night.  We’ll see what happens.

Emily and I switched hours with the kids today.  That means I worked this morning and played with them in the afternoon.  It was quite nice.  It’s a lot easier for me to relax and spend time with them when I’ve already gotten work out of the way.  When I have them in the morning, I feel like I need to be working.  It also meant I got to spend some one on one time with Delia, which I haven’t been doing much of lately since Henry requires a lot of chasing.  We made a kite out of a garbage bag and willow stalks that didn’t work very well (but was fun anyway) and we shoveled manure out of Cowboy’s paddock.  That may not sound like fun, but it was.

Henry continues to speed all over the place on his 4 wheeler.  I can’t believe he’s only two when I watch him ride it.   This evening we heard the four geese that have been visiting our pond coming from down Norby Rd (we hear them before we see them) so I told him to watch them land on the pond.  They chose to land on our shallow swampy pond instead, so he didn’t get to see them and was disappointed.  He ran over to his 4 wheeler and took off.  It’s really rough terrain around there, but he was determined to see the geese, and amazingly, the 4 wheeler made it!  He finally got stuck right near the pond, but I ran over and got him out.  He yelled “bye deese!” as he rode back to the driveway.

I need to read about geese.  I know they make strong pairs, but this year we have four that are always together.  Originally it was two and then the other two came.  The first two would try to chase them away, but after a while the second pair fought back and held their ground, and then I guess the original ones gave up.  Last year we had lots of ducks and this year I’ve only seen one or two on the pond all spring.  We seem to have one sandpiper that spends a lot of time on the banks of the pond too.

Yes – I’ve never done it before, can you believe it?  Sunday I did it for three hours and this afternoon for over an hour.

OK – that’s about as far as I can take that.  This is a family blog.    I’m talking about mowing a lawn.  We got a riding mower at the auction last week and it’s SO fun.  It goes really fast and cuts through huge tall totally wild grass that’s grown ALL summer.

Mowing is cool because it’s something to do outside that can involve the kids and also gets something accomplished.  The kids love four wheeling and it’s similar but the lawn mower is more my speed.    Plus, no gears either.  And I prefer steering wheel to handlebars.

What else did I do for the first time this weekend?  Jack hammer.  I’m not ready to talk about that yet.  (This could be a joke, but I’m not that funny or dirty.  I really did use a jack hammer.)

Today I mowed some of the really tall grass on the other side of the barn and along our road.  At first I found it hard to maneuver the tractor with the sickle bar, so I ended up missing spots and going over others twice – loading up the bar so I had to stop and clear it.  Then I got the hang of it.  I raked out a path through what I had cut so I’d have room to move without going over the downed grass again, and then carefully cut a few more swaths, and as long as I didn’t go over already cut grass, it worked great.  The key is to not get too aggressive and try to cut too much at once.  That’s when you start to miss grass and get it wound up in the works.

What I cut sure looks like decent hay to my very untrained eye, but I want someone who knows to look at it.  My plan is to see if Nora wants it (loose – not baled), and if she does, I’ll have the fun task of manually raking it up and loading it into my trailer.  If not, I guess I’ll just manually rake it up and load it into my trailer, and then either dump it off some place or burn it.  I hate for it to go to waste (if it’s even worth using for horses) and there’s not enough of it to get our neighbor to use his baler, and he’d have a rough time maneuvering it in there anyway.  Whatever happens, I’m happy to at least start getting rid of all the overgrowth.

I also discovered something about my tractor.  My hydraulics have never worked right, but now I’ve found a pattern.  Sometimes it would lift an implement up all the way, but usually not.  Today I realized that after the tractor has been off for a little while, if I raise the lift lever and then let the clutch out, it’ll quickly lift the implement all the way up.  Each subsequent time, however, it’ll only lift it about 1/3 of the way, and pretty weakly.  Now I have something to go on when researching this.  Oh, and my starting issue from the other day turned out to just be a loose wire.

We’re considering getting horses next year so we’ve been thinking a lot about our facilities, where we can have pasture land, etc.  Our field is badly overgrown, so I wanted to get a sickle mower to cut it down.  I found one down in Sturgeon Lake so we made a day out of it and picked up the mower and went to the Duluth Zoo.  It’s a Ford brand 501/14-93.  I managed to find an owners manual and parts manual for it and everything.

We got it home safely and I lifted it off the trailer with my loader.  I had to remove my overrun coupler so the PTO shaft would fit, but other than that it hooked right up.  I say it hooked right up – by that I mean I didn’t have to remove/replace/fix anything else.  What I don’t mean by that is that it was easy.  At any rate, it’s all hooked up.

When I first got it on, I was a bit nervous to fire it up, so I left the clutch engaged and turned over the engine a few times to see what would happen with the mower.  At first it struggled but then it broke loose and smoothed out  I started the tractor and let the clutch out and it rattled to life.  It’s a bit awkward with that big 6′ bar hanging off the side, but I carefully maneuvered around and managed to mow along the side of our road.  It cut beautifully!  Now I just need to figure out what to do with what I cut down.

I went to the back to try to start working on our field a bit.  It started out well but then I learned lesson #1:  don’t go over what you’ve already cut.  When the tall grass is standing, it’s easily able to chop it off at the bottom and let it fall over the back of the bar, but if you go over a pile of cut grass that’s already down, it just gets all tangled up.  When I tried to start the tractor up after clearing out the bar, I heard a zap and then the starter quit working.  I’m not sure what happened, but I hope it’s just a bad connection.

Once I get it running again and have some time, my goal is to cut down an acre of our field.  I’m going to walk it first and make sure there are no rocks or dirt mounds, and then pull all the weedy bushes out, and then see if I can manage to cut it down without getting all tangled.

This is going to be brief and maybe I’ll flesh it out later.

I was sick and seriously lacking energy for quite a while which meant that most farm projects and pretty much everything else was put on hold.

The chicks are very big and happily living outside.

Coop still isn’t finished, though I’m re-cleaning the garage in preparation for working on it again.

We made a trip to IL.

Blackie is broody again.

Tonight I found some baby barn swallows on the ground and in my boat.  We’re trying to help them.

My tractor is sick. Low oil pressure.  This means I can’t really mow and now we’re living in a jungle.  Rebuilding might be the only option, but there’s no time.

Snowy the barn cat had a nasty wound on her neck but she’s healing.

Henry is walking like crazy and EXTREMELY curious about everything.  His personality is becoming more apparent every day.  He’s such a cuddle bug and he hugs us ALL the time.

Delia has roller skates (thanks Nama!) and she took right off on them.

My speedometer now works.  The little rod in the front wheel that turns the square cable wasn’t turning, so I took the front wheel off to see what the problem was.  I was expecting to find a stripped gear, but what I found was that somebody had installed the wheel improperly at some point.  There’s a little washer in there with 2 tabs which is what turns a gear which turns a worm gear which turns the rod which turns the cable.  Somebody didn’t have the tabs lined up right when they put the wheel back on, so the washer with the tabs had bent so that the tabs didn’t ever push that first gear.  I took it out, straightened it with my vice, put it back together, and now it works.  I also took off the back wheel to try to get the tire off.  I couldn’t get it off, but I tried airing it up anyway, and it took air and held it.  I knew it wouldn’t last though, and I was right.  I took a quick ride down the road and a while after I got back I saw that it was flat again.  So, the revised list of things to do is: replace rear tube, get new front brake lever and cable, straighten handlebars, get pod lights working, fix trans drain plug leak, clean carb, replace needle valve, fix/replace intake boot, fix exhaust mount bolt.

There are some old tractor tires out in our field.  Two of them are really big and somebody made them into flower beds a long time ago.  Every time we ride by on the 4 wheeler, I tell Delia that we should drag one out with the tractor and make a sandbox.   Today we finally did it.  I figured it would be easy, but it was not.  They were really buried and wouldn’t budge.  I finally dug a hole under one side so I could fit a chain under it, and then I used my loader to lift them up and then push the dirt out and break the roots with a shovel.  It took a long time, but I finally got it loose, and carried it back to the sand pile with the tractor.  Delia and I shoveled sand into it, and now she and Henry have a sandbox!  They both played in it for a long time.  Henry even learned, after a while, that sand isn’t good to eat.

I couldn’t find the chickens today, so I was going to ride a 4 wheeler around to look for them.  As soon as Henry saw me get on, he started squirming out of Emily’s arms and pointing at me.  He loves riding them.  He’s also very interested in Delia’s bikes, skateboard, and tractor.  She generally gets all of them out at once when she goes outside, and then Henry makes the rounds, climbing on each one.  On the ones with three or more wheels, he can usually stand on the back and push off, or at least put his hands on them and push them around.

We had a bit of a storm tonight.  It didn’t rain much but there was a lot of lightning.  Delia and I stood outside and watched for quite a while.  She was fascinated, and I explained to her why she could see it before hearing it.

Delia and I went to an auction yesterday in Tower. It was one of the biggest I’ve ever been to. I can’t even describe how much stuff this guy had. There were two rings going at once and it still took 7 hours. Delia was soooo good. She and Eli sat and watched Yellow Submarine on her DVD player, and then they met another little boy. The three of them played really well together – climbing on rocks, making bird nests in the woods, etc.

There were 150 boat motors at this auction. Hundreds of traps (the guy made them). Hundreds and hundreds of tools, and often 5-10 duplicates of each. Trailers full of collectables. Boats. Heavy equipment. And lots, lots more.

I ended up spending just under $200, and man did I come home with some stuff. I got about 8 power drills, a circular saw (which I gave to Bryan), and a jigsaw, all for $6. I got several staple guns and a hammer stapler, a bunch of squares, chalk lines, hack saws, a lot of pulleys, a soldering iron, a ring compressor, some air guns and tire fillers, filter wrenches, telescoping magnet, a wood burning kit, and some other stuff, all for about $25. I wanted the pulleys specifically to teach Delia about mechanical advantage. I got a nice grill for my tractor for only $5! However, I also had to take a big bucket of chimney dampers. There are probably 20, and I have no idea what to do with them. I really lucked out on that one. I was up with one ring and happened to walk down the hill to the other ring right when they held it up. I was amazed nobody bid, so I waited until they got down to $5, and I got it. I also picked up a trap shooting thrower and a spinning target.

I missed out on a collection of small vices and a great little bow and arrow for Delia because I was too slow. I also passed up a few things that I’m regretting now, such as front tires for my tractor, and a garden cart.

I also got two big things: an old Wards Powr Kraft 230 amp stick welder (60s vintage), and a 1979 Suzuki 185cc dirt bike! I haven’t fired up the welder yet, but it appears to be in good shape. The bike was my choice of about 5 for $100. I could have had more, and probably should have bought them and resold them. I opted for the dirt bike over the other road bikes, because none had titles and weren’t running, so I figured a dirt bike that I could ride on our property would be a better deal if I couldn’t get it licensed or if it proved unreliable. It was quite an impulse buy, and I regretted it at first, but I quickly got over it, and now I’m thrilled because it started right up when I put some gas in it! It runs great, especially considering that it probably hasn’t been used in years. It has lots of power and runs great once you get going, though I need to keep the choke half closed and it hesitates a bit low down. Nothing a little carb cleaner can’t solve. Other problems: It floods while it’s sitting, so the inlet valve is bad. The electrical system (except for ignition) isn’t working. The front brake cable is broken, and the speedometer doesn’t work (the cable is fine, but the gear on the wheel isn’t turning). It sounds like a lot of issues, but it’s actually not bad at all.

On the plus side, most machines I buy don’t run right off the bat like that! The tires are good, and the shocks are great. The gas tank isn’t rusty. Everything feels good and solid. The transmission works great and the shifting is right on. The seat and plastics are in great shape. The tank is supposed to be blue, but somebody stripped it at one point. Given a day to work on it, I could probably fix all the problems.

After the auction, I took Delia to Fortune Bay for dinner, swimming, and the arcade. She had a great time, and so did I. She was such a good girl, and I’m so excited to have such a great auction buddy.

It looks like we got about 5″ as of 7:30 tonight, and it was still coming down. Delia rode her Kitty Cat today and I plowed our driveway with the tractor. It worked out pretty well! I’m starting to get the hang of it, and once I get my hydraulics working, it’ll be much easier.

Today we had 2 male mallards, 4 female, and one bufflenose on the pond all at once. Emily also saw a goose out there floating around.