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.
