The Slow Motion Retirement Plan

[vtsnowedin]

I still need to buy a 5' rotary cutter, but will wait until a good used one rolls around.

People tend to use a Rotary cutter until all the "Good" is used up. So don't be surprised if you end up buying a new one. Compared to tractors , barns and wells their pretty cheap.

 

[dhagood]

i have several irons in the fire at the moment, but one of the things i'm doing is cutting the grass.

i found a five foot wide international agritech rotary cutter on craigslist for a reasonable price (after looking for about five months) and snapped it up. the gearbox makes a little noise but rotates freely and easily. it needs a little of this and a bit of that; mostly what it needs is to be repainted.

i'm working on getting power to the well, more on that later.

 

[Capricious]

i have several irons in the fire at the moment, but one of the things i'm doing is cutting the grass.

i found a five foot wide international agritech rotary cutter on craigslist for a reasonable price (after looking for about five months) and snapped it up. the gearbox makes a little noise but rotates freely and easily. it needs a little of this and a bit of that; mostly what it needs is to be repainted.

i'm working on getting power to the well, more on that later.

Around here (Missouri) about 90% of the used cutters advertised are 5-footers. Condition ranges from like new to dead. My little tractor could barely handle a 4-footer and I spent a lot of time looking for a used 4 until I ran across a barely-used 42 inch Kubota-brand cutter, which I bought, and which is plenty for my 16 hp. It was the only used 42 inch that I saw advertised the whole time I was looking.

If I could have used a 5, I would have had my choice of many. The things are everywhere around here.

 

[dhagood]

the weather in eastern colorado has turned into winter,

and i'd like to say my construction season has come to a close, but i still have some stuff that needs to be done. one thing is to get power to the barn, which will feed the well. i did the trenching myself with the thought that i'd know exactly where the trenches were located and i'd also save myself about a thousand dollars instead of having a contractor do it. after machinery rental, i'm going to actually save about 320 bucks. it also took me forever to complete the trenches, long enough that the weather turned before the job has been completed. the trencher kept wanting to rotate down the slope whenever there was any kind of side slope which caused me to cut multiple arcs instead of a single straight line. also, my slope was pretty steep in a couple of spots and i was too chicken to drive the trencher into those areas. i ended up doing that mostly by hand. the trencher also struggled driving uphill and struggled more driving uphill on grass. that ended up being a lot of hard, dirty work and all i could think about was my initial impression of "how hard can that be"? i'd like to say this experience will teach me a lesson but it most likely won't :laughing:

the other is to build a fence that will keep the cows out of the barn and well area. that may prove to be impossible given the freezing temperatures over the last week, but i'm going to give it the old college try.

in other news, i finally found the work vehicle for our property. i've been looking for this for six months or so, and finally found one that was in decent shape and at a price i could afford.

it's a 2011 john deere four wheel drive 825i gator with 12000 miles on the clock. it runs and drives well. it used to have a roof, but the previous owner had it blow off while it was on a trailer. i'll get around to replacing that at some point.

all in all its been a productive year, but i didn't finish all the things i wanted to finish. i haven't even started everything yet...

 

[wmonroe]

Your place looks beautiful with the coating of snow. There never seems to be enough time to get all the projects done.

 

[dhagood]

Your place looks beautiful with the coating of snow. There never seems to be enough time to get all the projects done.

thanks, i'm rather fond of the view.

another thing i've been up to is organizing the barn. originally i had almost everything laid out horizontally (ie, on the dirt floor). recently i've been working on going vertical.

and i'm getting a lot of the floor space emptied. this is good, because i've got another car i need to stuff into the barn.

 

[newbury]

thanks, i'm rather fond of the view.

another thing i've been up to is organizing the barn. originally i had almost everything laid out horizontally (ie, on the dirt floor). recently i've been working on going vertical.

and i'm getting a lot of the floor space emptied. this is good, because i've got another car i need to stuff into the barn.

With walls like that get some pallet rack to the ceiling!
Every 8'x4' shelf frees up 32 square feet of floor space!

My one rack in the back

Frees up 120 sq feet of floor space!

And you can assemble them so they are OVER a car.

 

[Green Power]

Thanks for the update DHA, 12k miles seems like a lot for a SxS, but i am sure it has lots of life left. Im guessing the previous owner of the SxS was a rancher? The land sure looks nice with the snow cover.

 

[nvmyhd]

Love the progress, if you need help I’m not that far from you just south in Calhan.
Do you see the windfarm from your place?

 

[vtsnowedin]

Snow in winter equals good grass come spring. Of course where I am it just means deep mud in the roads come spring but I'm on a whole nother planet from you.