Anyone Else "Just Like to stay Busy?"

[BrokenTrack]

My Mom never said I was a bad kid, just very "active".

Over the last four years, (3) bouts of cancer had really slowed me up. For those that do not know, cancer is funny in that it consumes 3 times more energy to fight, even when the body is at rest, so trying to work, can really cripple it. This was my seventh circle of hades, as I am a "doer", a "go-getter", not someone to "sit around and talk about it."

In some ways, that can be bad. I am a workaholic for sure, but I got things to do, and a lot to get done. Sure I have lived my life at 100 mph, but equally I could die tomorrow and have lived a full-life...so no regrets.

But in terms of projects, I do tend to be single-focused. My wife: she can bake a cake, nurse a child's scrape, and watch Property Brother's while crocheting all at the same time. Me...nope...I am intensely focused on the project at hand. Well to a point...

I try and line up things so I get the most done with my time. Right now I am:

1. Re-graveling my driveway from gravel out of my gravel pit
2. Rebuilding my bushog
3. Installing a new back-up generator

I have to have (3) things going because the latter two for instance, can be done while it is raining, since they are in my barn and in my generator shed. Today since it is snowing (yes it is May 9th, and yes it is REALLY snowing and accumulating on the ground), I will work on the latter (2) projects: the generator and bushog rebuilds.

My To Do List includes things that can be done in good weather, but also bad weather, using the tractor or not, and whether I am waiting for parts or not, all in categories. That really keeps me focused so I can make the best use of my time.

Is anyone else like that, planning your to do list around weather, what else to do while on the tractor, and parts availability?

I get up early (2 Am or so), but go pretty hard all day long until 6 PM or so. After that I crash, but man after (4) years, it sure is nice to be myself again.

 

[Tomtint]

My Mom never said I was a bad kid, just very "active".

Over the last four years, (3) bouts of cancer had really slowed me up. For those that do not know, cancer is funny in that it consumes 3 times more energy to fight, even when the body is at rest, so trying to work, can really cripple it. This was my seventh circle of hades, as I am a "doer", a "go-getter", not someone to "sit around and talk about it."

In some ways, that can be bad. I am a workaholic for sure, but I got things to do, and a lot to get done. Sure I have lived my life at 100 mph, but equally I could die tomorrow and have lived a full-life...so no regrets.

But in terms of projects, I do tend to be single-focused. My wife: she can bake a cake, nurse a child's scrape, and watch Property Brother's while crocheting all at the same time. Me...nope...I am intensely focused on the project at hand. Well to a point...

I try and line up things so I get the most done with my time. Right now I am:

1. Re-graveling my driveway from gravel out of my gravel pit
2. Rebuilding my bushog
3. Installing a new back-up generator

I have to have (3) things going because the latter two for instance, can be done while it is raining, since they are in my barn and in my generator shed. Today since it is snowing (yes it is May 9th, and yes it is REALLY snowing and accumulating on the ground), I will work on the latter (2) projects: the generator and bushog rebuilds.

My To Do List includes things that can be done in good weather, but also bad weather, using the tractor or not, and whether I am waiting for parts or not, all in categories. That really keeps me focused so I can make the best use of my time.

Is anyone else like that, planning your to do list around weather, what else to do while on the tractor, and parts availability?

I get up early (2 Am or so), but go pretty hard all day long until 6 PM or so. After that I crash, but man after (4) years, it sure is nice to be myself again.

I have always been a mover..always doing something and get restless when idle. The past couple months have almost exhausted my to-do list of projects...had the weather been better...I would probably be out of projects all together. Its funny..2 months ago, my days typically started at 4am to get up and get out the door by 4:25 am so we could get into the city for work and miss traffic...Now I tend to get up at 5:30 ish,,,It may be a little adjustment getting back to the grind when we get the green light to go back to work.

 

[chim]

First of all, I'm glad you are doing well. I'm 70 and have been blessed in many ways, including health. With several of my friends facing some of the trials they have I don't take it for granted.

I always seem to have plenty to keep me busy. Being off work since March 19th (heading back on Monday) it seems I should have accomplished more. I'm not a morning person though and to get a proper start I need to do the "3 S's" (used to be 5 but now I'm bald and quit smoking 30 or 40 years ago). Being off work my schedule shifted. It has often been mid-morning till things got rolling, but then kept plugging away till dark.

My first project was completing the demolition and removal of a small old shed that was replaced with the large one I built late last year. The next one that still isn't finished is re-furbing an old 5' RFM. Welding and grinding here is outside work. The weather didn't seem like it would be great for painting, so the mower was set aside to cut down a few dead/dying trees. Since brush forks would be handy, making a set became the new priority. The forks I had were made to work with a pin-on bucket and went away with that tractor. Dropped the last tree on Thursday and should get that cut up and cleaned up today. Also there was a fair amount of mowing and some other tree trimming, helping with a couple things at the church, going into work occasionally to process some paperwork and check things, sharpened saws, rebuilt weed eater carb, and other small but time-consuming tasks.

 

[defranks]

Keep up the fight!

My wife and I moved from Washington to Tennessee 16 months ago. We rented a small condo when we arrived as a place to live while we got our house built. I went nuts in there, as there were no chores to be done. I guess I never quite realized how much I enjoyed doing chores. We found it impossible to find the help we needed to build our house, so I find myself doing all the work now. So maybe I shouldn't have complained about having too little to do, as now I definitely have too much! Never happy, I guess.

 

[shovelmike]

I'm glad you're doing well, broken track. I too was born to keep moving, covid put the kabosh on my part time job, so I have been super busy with projects. Fixed my grandson's girlfriend's ATV, my wife's ATV, my old Sportster, did needed carb rebuild on my old 29 year old lawn tractor that I don't use often, but the old thing just keeps on going (Craftsman-made by Murray 12.5 Briggs and Stratton commercial gold engine).
Also clearing a lot of brush from my paths in the woods.

 

[s219]

Is anyone else like that, planning your to do list around weather, what else to do while on the tractor, and parts availability?

Absolutely, and I am one of the few people I know that is so sensitive to weather and planning. Most of our local family, and most of my neighbors, are oblivious to weather in comparison to me. My wife pretty much schedules things when she wants to do them and we often have to neogtiate on my availability due to weather. It generally comes down to me doing the outdoor stuff when the weather cooperates, then letting her schedule me when weather doesn't matter. If I just followed everyone else's lead, I'd be wasting a lot of good weather on projects that don't require it.

I got lucky when coronavirus shutdowns hit in March, I had been planning and accumulating material and hardware for multiple large projects. I didn't know that ahead of time, but couldn't have planned it any better. So I have been able to knock out these major projects without a single trip to the store:

1) siding and trimming my barn addition
2) wiring and lighting for the barn addition
3) built new stairs down to my pier (originals wiped out by rot and a falling tree)
4) new wiring down to the pier
5) put in a new road for a trailer storage area (gravel had been delivered and was waiting on me)

And this week I am about to do the 200 hour service on my outboard motor, which will involve pulling off the lower unit to replace the water pump impeller, changing all fluids/filters, doing plugs, etc. Amazingly, I had bought all the parts, tools, and fluids for that last fall when I thought I might hit 200 hours sooner. So that's also on deck to go, and I hope to knock it out this week when we have several dry days in a row, since I will be working outdoors (can't fit boat in my barn although I could back the stern and motor inside if needed).

I only had one mishap that went awry, and that came when painting my barn addition and I *twice* spilled a can of stain from a ladder. Had to make two unplanned trips to the paint store for curbside pickup for that fiasco. It just so happens I hate painting so it doesn't surprise me that is the project that went off the rails. And that was probably the most weather-sensitive of them all, to boot.

Some folks have more enjoyable hobbies, and I do ski a lot in the winter. But the rest of the year I enjoy good old fashioned hard work as my hobby.

 

[sodamo]

Anyone Else "Just Like to stay Busy?"

Congrats to OP on cancer battle. At 73 I consider myself very fortunate to be in quite good health, wife survived her cancer going on 14 years.
Seems my todo list never gets smaller, by the time I complete a project, several more made the list. Usually have more than 1 active at a time to accommodate changes in weather. I no longer enjoy working out in the rain.
My big one this year was building a 24x31 carport (detailed in own thread). Lately I’m trying to get back to even on brushhogging, have 2 areas about 5+ acres each that take about 2 days each, but hope that I can get that down to maybe 3 days for both. I made the mistake of having potato farmers a few years and they left both areas in rough shape.
I hope that OP will start a thread on his mower rebuild as that’s on my list as well.
My big project for the summer is to get back to converting a container to a caretaker studio. I have most of the material, well except the 2x6s and 2x4s that conveniently got used on other projects.
Unlike many of you, I hardly do a full out 8 hr work day every day anymore, closer to 6 with more/longer breaks, start by 9 quit by 5 unless something special. Wife says it’s time I slowed down, but I tell her if I didn’t have projects she might decide I’m not needed and I’m not ready to check out yet.

 

[RalphVa]

I had been until hit by congenstive heart failure late in 2012. It and some lower leg neuropathy has really slowed me down.

My wife is the one who is always going. She's still sawing big limbs, autumn olives and down trees and lopping everything in the way of doing those. She has well less than an acre to go yet. Just went down to check on her. She'd been working since just after lunch down there, and it was after 5.

She continues to do all the housework except vacuuming here in the basement (my job) and knits afghans for the senior center while relaxing in front of the TV.

She even does a lot of the lawn mowing of the approximately 1/2 acre here around the house. I do the grass whipping and other gardening.

Ralph

 

[civilian]

To add to this I can say our (my wife's and my) project list won't be completed for a while (years maybe). We have 80 acres in Northern Michigan. We bought it 2 years ago, and built our retirement home here. Nice wooded area. Summer time projects are outside ones. Ash borer went through before we bought and have spent the last week or so cutting up 100" sticks of ash. Got a few loggers cords stacked up the firewood processor we will rent later this fall. Have a lot more to get to. Need to have driveway mix (Afton stone here) hauled in for have of the 3/8 mile drive. Landscaping needs to be done around the house and out buildings. A lean to for the firewood storage would be nice before winter. Garage walls need insulating before winter to conserve on wood burned to heat it and the house. Rear deck may not happen this year. Work shop insulation and heat will probably be next year. (Hopefully investments will return by then.) This past winter was building kitchen cabinets. Next winter wil be finishing the doors and drawers for those cabinets, a laundry cabinet, window and door trim in the house. Trim will be from cedar and white pine that was rough sawn a few years ago. So yeah we have a list of projects to look forward to. Jon

 

[dstig1]

But in terms of projects, I do tend to be single-focused. My wife: she can bake a cake, nurse a child's scrape, and watch Property Brother's while crocheting all at the same time. Me...nope...I am intensely focused on the project at hand.

You need to watch this clip...

YouTube

 

[Tractor Seabee]

Hang in there Broken Track. Amazing what you have been through and still functioning well. Not trying to upstage you but I knno all about being debilitated. I am now 84 and still can put in 1/2 day or more on physical work. No cancer but was diagnosed with cardio-myopathy which recently has morphed into congestive heart failure. Still running my tractor and doing a landscaping/irrigation project. Lifting those 40# landscape blocks while down on my knees. A major fence gate rebuild will cap off my outside work hopefully this all during the summer. New projects inside.

Time is on our side if we keep active. I actively worked for wages till I was almost 80.

Ron

 

[BrokenTrack]

Re: Anyone Else "Just Like to stay Busy?"

I hope that OP will start a thread on his mower rebuild as that痴 on my list as well.

My problem is, I seldom stop to take pictures. I want to say, on the smaller projects, but that is not really true. I built an 8 x 12 duck coop which was a pretty big project; complete with door, lights, roof and everything, and I think I took one picture mid-way through. I have not even taken a picture of it finished yet.

It is the same with my bushog. Being a bushog, they are simple, so in 45 minutes I had it torn down to the individual parts, and out of boredom started to weld it back, and yet have not taken one picture of it. It is always nice to get a before and after picture.

I am trying to keep the bushog decent looking, without looking like it was patched all to heck, however when the output part of the gearbox snapped in half, it sent the bushog into a pretty big wobble that drove the knives up through the top of the deck. It is pretty hard not to patch that and make it look like you did not patch it! I got it welded up though. It is a lot stronger than it was. Another part that is worn out is underneath the bushog here it can ride along the ground on high spots. Fifty-five years of doing that has worn out the wear bar I welded on it twenty years ago. So I need some flat bar to resurface the resurfaced wear bar.

I was thinking of adding some stiffener bars to the gear box too where it broke, I got to put strong backs in anyway so as I weld the collar, it stays in alignment, so if I keep them on, it will provide a lot of strength for the intense flexing those bearings/gear box gets. I will have to notch out for them in the mounting frame, but that is not too bad, and being the output shaft, it is not like anyone is going to see it. At this point, anything I do that is cheap and stronger is worth doing. I will do all I can to keep ye ole mower...mowing, but if it craps out, then I will just replace it, but most likely with a flail mower.

 

[BrokenTrack]

My oldest daughter is reaching that age at 15 years old, where she is learning just what it takes to get things done. A week or so ago, I ran the power from the house to the generator shed. Now this is 100 amps, so pretty big wire, and while it took me all day, I was able to run the power from a load panel halfway into the house, up and through the attic, then outside where it ran to some entrance cable, over 100 feet to the generator shed, down through a mast, and then into the generator's load box. In writing that, it seems pretty simple, but all I had was 2-2-4 entrance cable with bare neutral so I had some pretty good connections to make on each end of the masts going into the generator shed/house.

I also put up a utility pole half way across, so that meant going into the woods, cutting the tree, hauling it home, debarking it, then securing a insulator to it, digging its hole, raising it up, then back filling it. That alone took over an hour.

So it was doing all that transmission line work that day, that my oldest daughter saw just what it takes to keep this place improving. But it can be frustrating because when you are asked what you did that day, "oh I put up some wires from the house to the generator shed", boy; that just does not account for all the work that went into that day! But it was nice to see that she was impressed with what gets done. Hopefully when she gets married, she finds a go-getter type husband, and not some "gamer" or, "is not really into work."

 

[BrokenTrack]

The projects I have been working on since Black Swan struct the world has been:

1. My master bedroom redo. That consisted of building another closet so that we had jack and Jill walk-in closets, then a new headboard, new matching side tables, and finally plugging off some windows, and installed a new patio door. Like the vanity, the furnishings in this room were san from the same tree as the vanity. (Completed)



2. Then it was off to putting in a new double vanity in our main bathroom. It was not too complex of a project, just redoing a wall with shiplap lumber instead of drywall, redoing some drains, and then making the new vanity. Interestingly, this was made from a dying pine tree on our own land, so from stump, to sawmill, to bathroom vanity. (Completed)



3. Then Katie wanted some new ducks and chickens, like 27 of them, so I had to build a new duck coop. This was pretty involved because it was from the ground up, 8 x 12 feet in size, a full size door, walls, windows, and a roof, and even has wiring inside. (Completed)



4. Then knowing I will bushog in a few months, I wanted to get that rebuilt, so I started on that last week. This is not a huge project so I needed other things to do while waiting for parts and stuff. (Still in process)



5. Thinking that the gravel pit had finally thawed out, and that I could start hauling gravel from my gravel pit to regravel my driveway, I started doing that. I di not expect to get 6 inches of snow yesterday, so that is now on hold for awhile, but I did manage to get a 40 cubic yard start on the project. When I get all done, I expect it will take around 250 cubic yards, so I have a long ways to go on that, but that is a job that I can do when the weather is nice outside. (Still in process)



6. I have been working on my back up generator for awhile, but really have got a lot done these last few months. It is a very long-term project, but is coming along nicely. We are a lot better off now then when we were a few weeks ago, so I am very pleased with how this job is turning out.

 

[shovelmike]

That backup generator setup looks great, as well as all your other projects, you are a very busy man. It's good that your daughter is able to be involved and helpful too.

 

[gsganzer]

Brokentrack, your place looks great! You've tackled some ambitious projects!

I hate when I go to someone's place and they have a bunch of half started/half finished projects, like cars, equipment and house in various states of repair and construction. With that being said, while I typically try not to dilute my efforts, I may have 1-3 projects going. Or more accurately, a current project, a next in-line project and a rainy day as time permits project.

My main project right now is grading a patio and flower bed area so I can put down some decomposed granite for aesthetics and lower maintenance. I have to work that one around the weather (both rain and heat). It looks like today and tomorrows weather will cooperate, so I'll be getting that one off my plate in the next few days. My next main project is to get my galvanized water trough "cool pool" ready for the season and complete the thermal syphon heating coil for it. My back burner, as time permits project is to rework/modify my welder skid so I can add some lead reels. That ones a rainy day project that really isn't pressing to get done, it's an "I want" project, versus an "I need" project.

After the welding skid modifications, I'll build some new deer feeders for my deer lease. I'm going to mount two independent 55 gallon barrels/timers on a skid that will allow me to throw feed for 60 days. Plus I can back up to fill them off a tailgate, rather than the tripod/winch setup that my feed barrels currently use. I'm getting tired of cranking feeders up and down. The skid will allow me to move them easily if I need to.

 

[Thomas]

Keep on making dust BT. :thumbsup:
Like the old saying goes..."Can't get nothing done laying in bed".
Also like to keep busy but since I retire plaining around the weather not problem anymore.

 

[BrokenTrack]

Keep on making dust BT. :thumbsup:
Like the old saying goes..."Can't get nothing done laying in bed".
Also like to keep busy but since I retire plaining around the weather not problem anymore.

I noticed when I retired that my repair costs suddenly jumped up. That was because for years, if something broke I cobbled it back together, or just set it aside, because I did not have time to fix it, or if I did fix it: I did not do it properly. So when I retired I suddenly had time to do things right.

But I am back to work...sort of.

My Doctor wanted me to take disability, but that did not seem right to me. Cancer has wiped me out so I could no longer farm, but I worked with the USDA to get disabled farmers in the private sector, and it worked! I now work for the US Dept of Labor teaching impoverished kids a trade. I can farm, but I can do that!

I only worked a day, and then they shut down due to Black Swan, so I know I got a limited time to get things done before I am at work 5 days a week again.

But I admit, I look back at the end of the year and marvel how much was accomplished. Still, a lot can be done if a person just does a little at a time.

 

[BrokenTrack]

That backup generator setup looks great, as well as all your other projects, you are a very busy man. It's good that your daughter is able to be involved and helpful too.

The generator came out better than what I thought it would. Of course, had I known what it would take for work at the start, I would have never even started. But it is working out well. I just got a few small things to do on the engine, like get oil, coolant, and then fuel to it, and it should go. The fuel system will be the hardest part as it is a nightmare of different fittings.

Once that is done, and the engine is running, I need to belt the generator and the engine together. The pulley sizes are not right however. It has a double v-belt sheave on the engine now, but it is 7.5 inches, and I need a 18 inch pulley on the generator end, and only have a 15 inch pulley off an old sawmill, so I might need to machine my own pulley. The only other thing I can do is put a 3 inch pulley on the engine and go to the 15 inch pulley; that might work too.

 

[sodamo]

Thanks for the info. I’d say my RC is a bit rougher shape.


Mechanics are good, but the deck is in serious need of help. I do have a plan for this summer, but need to do some practice welding. Most likely I will completely disassemble and rebuild deck.

Cheap mowers just aren’t available here that I have seen otherwise I’d seriously consider one. Only 2 offerings on CL locally, 1 for $400 that looks even worse than mine, 2nd a used Land Pride 1860 for $2600.