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At 76, I sometimes think that I should have one of my doctors install a zerk on each knee. Then I could give them a couple of shots each morning so they'd move easier. (Some days they need it more than others.) Trouble is, I don't know which grease would be best for that application...

I use Dawn dishwashing liquid and some water to clean my greasy hands. Works great, better than some mechanic's hand cleaner I've tried. I figure if they can use it to clean birds after an oil spill, it ought to be good enough for me.

No experience here with chewing up a sod with a tiller, or with working in clay, so I can't say if a tiller would be the best tool for your purpose or not. That said, less than a month ago we had to replace our 10-year-old 60-inch Tractor Supply tiller because after hitting one too many of our...

Have you tried getting some estimates for taking it down? You might be surprised. We've had the same guy take down four trees for us over the last five years. Three threatened the house, one the garage. Emerald ash borer got to two of them, wild grape strangled the roots of another, and the...

You'd love the PTO shaft on our pull-type hay tedder. Built by Kuhn many years ago, it's painted in New Holland colors. The PTO shaft is very long as these shafts go, and very heavy, and has TWO push buttons that need to be pressed simultaneously to connect it. Loads of fun.

Depends on the tractor. We have three, a John Deere, an IH, and an old 1952 Case. On the JD, the tractor PTO can be moved if the engine is off. On the IH, the tractor PTO can be moved if disengaged, regardless of engine status. The old Case is the most dangerous. That PTO "coasts" with no...

That pile of grass clippings would make great mulch/compost for a vegetable garden. And as for the dandelions, if the price of coffee keeps rising, we'll need them for this: https://groundabout.coffee/brew-guides/dandelion-coffee-recipe/

Best laugh I've had since the snow melted away. I live on a small farm, with over 50 acres of hay. Sometime around mid-May, those hay fields are covered with dandelions, and a few days later the seeds are disbursed as nature intended. A waste of time and money to try to stop it, as by the time...

A "weed" is defined as any plant growing where you don't want it. So by definition, if I'm OK with the stuff that's growing in my lawn, it's weed-free!

I'm of the lawn care school that says "If it's green and the mower can cut it off, it's grass." Consequently, I have several different species of "grass" in my lawn, some even planted on purpose. When I mow, especially this time of year, it looks great when I'm done, but by the next day some...

Wait a minute... How do we know this is REAL? How do we know it isn't some A.I. generated scam? You can't trust anything you see on social media these days, you know. ;):cautious:

Around here, there's no such thing as an "old" elm. Dutch elm disease got all the old ones decades ago. My grandfather liked having elms around, calling them "Nature's lightning rods." He claimed he'd seen several times when lightning had hit an elm rather than a nearby building. We still have...

Nothing new here. For many years, when the price of crude oil went up, the price at the pump would immediately follow, even though the cost of fuel already in the tanks had not changed. The justification? The sellers claimed they would have to pay more to replace the inventory they were selling.

Not just manufacturing jobs. Amazon, who sells, among other things, tractor parts (Must keep this on-topic), built a regional warehouse in my area a few years ago. Micron, an American company that builds memory chips (No doubt some of which are destined for new tractors), is attempting to build...

I saw a note about an article in a farming magazine with the title "Outwitting Slugs This Spring." I was kinda disappointed to see they weren't talking about politicians... I think that once the dust settles we'll see that things won't be as rosy as the Empowered predict, nor as dire as the...

So how do all those Wisconsin dairy farmers manage to work their fields?

It must be that way in New York. All of our utility lines, power, telephone, Internet/TV are on poles. Too rural for public water or sewer. Even so, a few years back, when the County snowplow driver took out our mailbox post (Driving WAY too fast, threw the snow too hard), the County had to...

That's if you are in a spot where you can use a socket. For open end wrenches, 13 is a little big for 1/2, and 1/2 is often not quite big enough to work with a 13mm nut - unless it's worn enough that it's a bit too big to be a 1/2 any longer. I've taken the corners off of far too many tight...

We wore out my grandfather's Case SC four times already. My grandfather rebuilt it once, my father once, and I've done it twice. Just got through doing a valve job on it last Fall. Will be putting it back to work plowing vegetable plots if the snow ever melts away. Dash consists of a manual...

Nothing new here. I have a New Holland 975 combine from 1969. It was built in Belgium, but has a US-built Ford inline 6 engine, so OEM bolts were metric on the machine, but SAE on the engine. The designer was aware of the issue, and the manual is very proud of the fact that combine bolt sizes...

Around here (Central NY) most of the bigger farms are LLCs, but they are family-owned. They still consider themselves "family farms," as well they should.

Is there a RIGHT direction? In my experience, no matter which direction I aim the blowing snow, it comes right back into my face - especially on windy days. :D

My grandfather's Case SC has an hour meter on it. Runs off the oil pressure - or would, if it hadn't broken 50-60 years ago... Our other tractors don't have them, so I can only guess. But it's considerably more than 100 hours each, I'm sure.

I see where Adams is getting hammered again. Something like 2 feet overnight, and continuing to fall like that almost all day today.

I live in Pompey, NY, in the hills southeast of Syracuse. We don't usually get Tug Hill snow amounts, but we have our moments. Coastal storms, like the Blizzard of '93 (The "Storm of the Century") tend to hit us harder than they do Tug Hill. The JD 4600 and the 1165 snowblower we have now will...

Shrug. I wouldn't know how that works. The only chains I ever worked with were used. One set was inherited from my grandfather, and when those eventually wore out I replaced the cross chains myself, cutting them the right length so they would fit.

That chain may have been the correct size for those tires when they were new, but now it looks to me like the tread is about half worn away. Also, it's possible that the chains themselves have worn and stretched a bit, but that is less likely, IMO. So, for whatever reason, the chains are now...

Those losses were more because the economy had been tanked because of covid, and so demand for motor fuels was way off, than it is because of the price of crude.

Or how about how, right after they pave a nice, smooth road, they grind gouges out of the center. It's almost as if they don't want you crossing to the wrong side of the road when you fall asleep at the wheel...

We have much the same setup here. The cost of diesel is an expense for us too, but that cost certainly IS relevant. The higher the cost of diesel, the lower the farm profits.

Excise taxes might have been enough to cover maintaining the roads back when they were introduced, but the rates, at least here in NY, haven't changed in years. They aren't enough now. Materials cost more, as does equipment and labor.

Far too many of my generation, Baby Boomers, considered a marriage license "just a piece of paper" that they didn't really need to show their love. Perhaps they should have been better at doing their homework. The government also raised the "full" retirement age. Instead of 65, like my father...

Just about everybody who filed tax returns got at least three - unless your income was above whatever the upper limit was. Two came from 45, one from 46. The idea was to spend that money to stimulate the economy, to keep us in a recession instead of another Depression because of covid. My...

Not repaid - YET. The day of reckoning is coming. When they do nothing, and what's left in the Social Security Trust Fund actually runs out, and benefits are reduced to 75% because less is coming in than is owed, then Congress will have to make up the difference from somewhere. Assuming, of...

I bought my first computer, an Atari 800, in 1985 at a garage sale for $25. It worked the way it was, but I soon tired of the tape drive that came with it and bought a floppy drive. Don't remember how much that cost. BTW, I still have it, and it still works, though I don't use it for anything...

I too paid into Social Security for many years. Even though I'm 75, and collecting, I'm still paying into the system because I remain self-employed as a farmer. They recalculate my benefit every year, based on the new addition to my earnings record. Because there were a few very lean years in...

At least two things wrong with that assumption: 1. That Canadian oil will probably be subject to the tariffs imposed on imports from Canada. Oh, and importing Canadian oil doesn't promote "American energy independence." 2. While you can lead an oil producer to federal lands, you can't make him...

Most amusing. I live on US 20 in Central NY. US 20 is a major highway that goes all the way across the US, from sea to shining sea. My place is just south of Syracuse, but it is definitely rural - dairy country for the most part. I see farmers driving farm equipment by my house all the time...

Li-ion batteries aren't bad, either. A few years ago I bought an old Dewalt cordless drill at a church sale for a dollar. The original Nicad battery in it barely made it grunt. I found a replacement with nimh cells in it, and that has worked well, but is beginning to show its age. Recently, I...

In truth it's been at least 20 years since we had to tow a vehicle that wasn't ours. We live on a main highway that is cleared before anything else, and such incidents are rare. This time, though, it was a neighbor's daughter. We used the Case SC that time, because it didn't have any attachments...

I'm 75, and I wouldn't trust canned goods as old as you, either - though I have no problem with properly refrigerated leftovers after a week. But then, I'm a lot more delicate than my grandfather's 1952 SC.

I do the same, though we have a snowblower on the back, rather than a blade. If that's not going to work, and the need is great enough, then the snowblower can be removed in a matter of minutes. If in 4wd, you are using both axles to pull, so relative strength isn't a factor, but traction is...

I wouldn't hesitate to use it in one of mine, if it looks OK, but then all of my tractors are a lot older than the oil...

On the 72-year-old Case SC that I grew up with, you can't. The PTO spline will "coast" whenever the tractor is running, if not connected to anything. If you adjust the PTO clutch so that it doesn't, it slips too much to run even the lightest of equipment. Shut the engine off, and you can turn...

The Clintons vacationed near here twice while Bill was in office. The first time, he made a speech at a fund raiser, calling the area "spectacularly beautiful." It's the only thing I've ever heard him say that I agree with...

I was drafted in the early 70's, spent two years in the DC area, and as soon as I could came back home to New York. Lots of residents have fled from NY, for what they claim are good reasons, but I wouldn't want to live anywhere else. Third generation to live on this farm, and it was paid for...

My earliest memory of driving a tractor was picking rocks with my Dad. I have no idea how old I was, but it was definitely less than 10. I was on his old 1930's Case CC tractor, in low gear, driving from rock to rock, pulling the flat wagon behind it, while he walked. Dad had me drive because I...

Update on the La Crosse: It's still working, but if you live in an area where the temperature drops much below zero, be prepared to replace the little rechargeable lithium button battery in the sensor about once a year. I think it's a limitation of the battery, rather than the unit itself...

Our JD 4600 and our old Craftsman lawn tractor use the same setup, even looks like the same switch. It's a push-button momentary switch on the bottom of the seat that's normally OFF. Sit on the seat, something presses the button, and allows the tractor to operate. Remove weight from the seat...

My grandfather used gasoline to start brush fires - until he wound up with third degree burns on both arms because of an unexpected gust of wind...

The manual for my grandfather's 1952 Case SC says to "be sure to use a good, clean grade of gasoline with an octane rating of at least 65." It was one of those tractors that, with a special manifold, could use something the manual calls "low-cost fuel." We still use that old workhorse, and I...

General Partnership with my brother. I do the taxes. Small farm, neither of us ever married, both of us in our 70's, third generation of the family to own and operate the farm. The farm and Social Security supplement each other. We keep things simple, strictly debt-free so we don't have a lender...

Just getting out of bed every morning carries a risk. But for most of us, NOT getting out of bed every morning carries an even bigger risk. Avoiding all risk is impossible. Safety is all about learning how to choose which risks to take.

We have four. From biggest to smallest: John Deere 4600 - our current workhorse, but is too big to do everything. Cab often gets in the way of watching equipment work. International 424 - the workhorse for many years, but really is too small for what we made it do. Our most maneuverable, best...

Our IH 424 had CaCl in it when we bought it, but eventually it messed up the rims. We put windshield washer fluid in them, and have never looked back. Up here you have to be sure to use mid-winter fluid, as it has a lower freezing point, but it's easy to find. I did the job myself, bought the...

We've had one of those for years, except that ours is red. Dunno if that means it's newer or older. It's handled anything we can get to it, including some big, twisted stuff. We have towed it a mile or so, but I would agree that it really isn't designed for towing on the highway any distance...

We live on a main road in Central NY, where the terrain can be very hilly. I don't have occasion to do it myself, but we can watch all day long as other farmers pull large implements and loaded wagons with tractors by the house. I doubt that these implements are equipped with brakes of any kind...

Ours did that, too. We bought it used, and it is our first and only 4WD tractor. We did not check the front axle fluid as we should, and it was low. Could have been low when we got it. Anyway, the front differential and several bearings and associated parts were bad, according to the JD dealer...

I've found that USA made is no guarantee of superior quality these days. There's a lot of junk produced in the USA, too. Neither is "brand name." I've been caught too many times by buying a venerable "brand name" product, only to learn that the name had been acquired by someone else now...

You must have a really heavy mower if you need that much counterweight. Our JD 4600 with the 460 loader is very front-heavy when there's nothing on the back. Makes it feel almost... ponderous to drive. If not really needed, I prefer to have less weight than more. Less weight means less soil...

Most of our mowing is hay fields with a mower-conditioner. We planted them, and tend to remove any boulders, tires, and other old car parts when we did so. We remove the bucket but keep the frame, partly for visibility, but also because it gives a better ride. But that's for mowing. For other...

I don't think I'd like a cab with AC. Coming out of a building with AC on a hot day hits me like a brick, and I would expect the same if I had to get out of my tractor. We do have a tractor with a cab, but no AC. It's tolerable in the summer with the doors off, but I don't like driving it for...

I was about to make a comment like "That's what a tedder is for" when I realized that you guys are talking about mowing a LAWN, not hay. Air-conditioned lawn mower, interesting concept, but an extravagance we won't be indulging. We don't even have AC on our farm tractors. The one tractor with...

I did too, back when we still had cows, even when we used sisal. Only thing that makes sense. But we sold all the cows a few years back. Now that we are in our 70's, they're just too much work for what we got out of them. We sell our hay to local horse/cow/goat/sheep owners who come to the barn...

Around here, at the time of year when it's dry enough to burn, the county imposes a "burn ban" to prevent it. Besides, it seems to me that burning the field would melt the poly, turning it into an even more impossible-to-remove mass.

Agree with the "lazy" comment, but not about there being no advantages to poly over sisal. The main one is consistency. The last sisal I used varied in thickness from nearly rope to string. It was impossible to set my old baler to tie reliably with it, and when it did tie the twine frequently...

One tractor with a cab, two that are open (three if you count the old garden tractor), zero radios. Don't want one, either. I prefer to keep my attention on the task at hand. As far as I'm concerned, distracted driving is as dangerous in a tractor as it is in a road vehicle - under some...

Stay away from the cheap ones. I added one to our IH 424 some 25-30 years ago with the idea of powering a light if I needed it. It lasted a few months, but after working the tractor in the rain a few times the receptacle just corroded too much to work any more. Wasn't worth the trouble to...

Smoking eventually killed my father, but it took it 15 years of suffering and gradual deterioration to do it. I never wanted to smoke, because I sat next to Dad at the kitchen table growing up. His smoke would drift my way, and I absolutely hated it. Could never understand why people would...

I once made the mistake of trying to set up a tiller to be used on two different tractors. One needed the PTO to be about 2 inches shorter than the other. It worked OK - for a while. But eventually, while using the tiller on the tractor that should have had the longer shaft, the tube split wide...

The rules are much the same in my township in Central New York. We made a deal with a dealer of Amish-built sheds some seven years ago to get a 10x12 shed for "free" if we allowed him to put a sign on it advertising his business to the patrons of our farm stand. Because it's on skids and is just...

Don't have a backhoe. We've moved many rocks around that size over the years to get them off the fields for planting seems like two or three new ones turn up every year. All we do is move them off the field into a hedgerow where they are out of the way - precision placement isn't a priority. We...

Wellll, not entirely useless. You just have to be reasonable with what you try to do with it. If you tow very infrequently, and only light trailers, it can be OK. We had a '98 Explorer, and the book said the bumper was rated as a Class 2 hitch. Once a year, we towed a small boat trailer with it...

Maybe for some of us, but not for me. I remember being assigned to learn at about 13. My father had borrowed a little Massey Harris to use to haul a homemade grain trailer around, and back it into the barn for unloading. He ran the combine, and I unloaded. On top of it being a borrowed tractor...

Hey, my 70-year-old Case SC, the one that belonged to my grandfather, the one I learned on, is orange. Well, the parts that still have some original paint are orange, anyway...

I'm going to say that none of us can make this decision for you, because as with most decisions, it depends. We have three tractors, four if you include the old Simplicity garden tractor. The oldest is my grandfather's 1952 Case SC, which has been converted to 12 volts, and has had three engine...

If just changing the ignition coil, be sure to get one that includes a ballast resistor, or that you add one into the circuit. Otherwise, you'll burn your points in short order. Don't ask me how I know this, just accept it as fact.

Fascinating. We bought our Stihl MS 290 10-12 years ago, use it mostly just to cut our own firewood. The manual states specifically that it is OK with E10 gas at 50:1, so I don't worry about it that much. Mostly, when we cut firewood in the fall we use gas leftover from our annual fishing trip...

Here in Upstate New York, even trailers behind road vehicles (pickups, SUVs, passenger cars) don't require brakes if the trailer weight is below a certain limit. An RV behind a pickup would need them, but an average boat trailer would not. And even then, farm implements being towed under a...

"Your largest tractor is your Kubota L2501 which weighs between 2400 to 2600 pounds. You mention a large water container. Water weighs 8 pounds per gallon. You don't want the weight of your load to exceed the weight of the tractor at all because that amount of mass compared to your tractor...

A word of warning if you are installing a drawbar. If you are using PTO-driven 3-point implements like a tiller or snowblower, be sure to remove the drawbar completely or at least swing it over to the side. If you leave it in the middle and lower the operating implement so that the PTO hits the...

Farms come in all sizes, and varieties. We have a relatively small farm in Central NY, about 200 acres (150 tillable). Our main crops are horse hay and vegetables, and we have a mix of drawbar and 3-point equipment, much of it older, and even a couple of homemade pieces. Drawbar equipment...

My experience with the Accurite 3-in-1 sensor wasn't so rosy. It's not solar-powered, and used to eat the 4 AA lithium batteries for breakfast. Had to replace them every 3-4 months. Eventually, the temperature sensor stopped reporting anything. After a bit of investigation on the Interwebs, I...

We pull both doors right off in the summer so we can have some cross-ventilation. Fortunately, we are in the hills and almost always have a breeze.

I hear ya, but... Our JD 4600 has a cab, nice this time of year, but there are days in July and August when I wish it didn't have one. (no AC)

Can't say about now, but it wasn't always so. We have a 2002 4600, and the engine, at least, was built by Yanmar. We had to buy a new starter last February. Deere wanted around $400 for the part. We found an aftermarket one on Amazon for $100, and it is working just fine. But my point is, the...

"Farms" come in all sizes. Around here, they can be as small as a 10 acre vegetable operation to as big as a multi-thousand acre dairy. My farm, in the family for 74 years and still operating, is just short of 200 acres. We don't use "big" anything, because we don't need it. Oh, and even the...

That wouldn't fly around here. Back in the late 50's, early 60's, my cousin drove a snowplow for the township. One stormy Christmas he got permission to take his dinner break here, so he could enjoy Christmas dinner with the rest of his family. He was allowed to back the plow into our driveway...

Totally agree. I don't cut wood professionally - I just have a big old farmhouse with a hungry furnace in my cellar and several acres of woods to feed it. I hand-filed for years, hated every minute of it, never really got any more than passable at it, but it was a necessary evil. I saw those...

Fascinating. I live in Onondaga County, NY, close to Syracuse, but in a rural part of the county. But I can't relate, because I live on a Federal highway, one of the main east-west routes in the county, so we get plowed first. The state is in charge of maintaining my road, but they pay the...

Yep. Take care of your stuff and usually it will last. Abuse it and it won't.

These hold the boats on my trailer for a 100-mile trip and back once a year. I'd estimate around 200lbs of gear inside the lower boat, including motors, fuel tanks, oars, folding seats, etc. The boats can be handled by two men, one on either end - one 69 years old, the other 73 - so they aren't...

I'm right-handed, so I have it at about 2 o'clock. A lefty would put it at around 10 o'clock.

They were standard equipment on the 50's Case SC. Learned to drive a tractor on one, been driving it for about 60 years. Yes, I do have one finger that was broken, but that was from trying to manhandle a small bull with a halter. No broken appendages from the knob yet... My two tractors with...

That explains why it always looks like the front wheels are slipping a little when we use our JD 4600 with the Ford 101 3-bottom plow. They are!

Drove 2wd tractors for over 50 years before driving my first 4wd tractor, and using turning brakes to make a short turn on a slippery surface was and still is automatic. But the first time I tried it with the 4wd engaged the resulting noise from the front end told me it was a very, very bad...

At one time or another, my old 1952 Case SC (roughly 25-30 HP) has done just about everything. Plow, drag, plant, cultivate, mow hay, tedd hay, rake hay, bale hay, plow snow, the list goes on and on. And it hasn't quit yet.

Maybe where you are, but up here in the Frozen North such things are actively sold for use on cars. The electrolyte comes from the salt that is put on the roads.

Not going to worry about that with my IH 424. Those places wouldn't work on those tires, anyway, no matter what I had used to fill them. They'd say the tires are too far gone, and needed to be replaced. And most folks would say they were right. But then, I'm not most folks.

Depends on which formulation you get. Here in Onondaga County the -20 degree mid-winter stuff might freeze as a thin layer on a cold windshield, but if the washer sprayed it it didn't freeze in the reservoir, and it won't be freezing inside a tire. I'm not sure my old IH 424 would start if it...

Sounds like what we did with our IH 424's 13x28 tires, except that we used the 12V pump from a 15 gallon spot sprayer for the fill job. Since then, I converted the sprayer for boom use, and that required a stronger pump, but I kept the old pump handy for handling tire ballast. I've had to repair...

One of the things we do to make ends meet is sell vegetables by the side of the road. We've been doing that for around 60 years, since I was a kid. In that time, we eventually learned that it's better for business if you are easy to find, so we do everything we can to make it that way.

Widening the rear wheelbase is a fine idea - unless you are going to plow with a moldboard plow. If the rear wheel of the tractor doesn't line up properly with the plow, you'll have no end of trouble with it.

That would be true if both axles were rigidly connected. But every wide-front tractor I've ever used has the front axle jointed so that on uneven ground it isn't constanly trying to twist the machine.

If my 70-year-old Case SC (roughly 30HP) couldn't pull a rock out, I wouldn't bother even trying with come-alongs. My Case can rip a set of typical "2-ton" come-alongs apart without even grunting.

My newest tractor is 20 years old, and I could barely afford it when we bought it 5 years ago. I could not afford it now at today's prices. My other tractors are roughly 55 and 70 years old, and I didn't buy them. I inherited them.

No worries about warranty service here, regardless of any brand I might purchase. I can't afford a tractor that's new enough to still be under warranty...

That was my first thought, too. Is it possible that somebody got the filter home, tried to put it on, learned that it was the wrong one, and took it back for an exchange without doing a great job of cleaning it up after the attempt?

Oops. I was originally sent here by an email from TractorByNet, and didn't notice that it's a John Deere forum. And here I am posting pictures of a Case. It's a wonder they don't throw me out. To redeem myself, I'll post a photo of our 4600 with our 3-14 Ford 101 plow.

Nah, the lack of a ROPS will do me in long before the SC gets to 80 mph. Actually, the knob was standard equipment. It was an important part of Case's trademarked "Quick Dodge" steering. Look for it at about 5 o'clock in the upper photo of this page from the owner's manual...

As others have said, it depends on the soil type and condition as much as anything. Also, correct setup of plow and tractor is vital. I've been plowing with the outfit below for more than 50 years. It's a 1952 Case SC with a model BER 2-14 plow. 2WD, tires not loaded but steel weights on the...

I'm from near Syracuse, NY. We've been known to get some blowing and drifting snow from time to time... Currently using the only tractor snowblower we've ever owned, a Frontier 1164 on a John Deere 4600. 4WD, forward/reverse transmission, loaded industrial tires (that's what came on it), no...

Some of you guys must go crazy watching TV cop shows where somebody uses zip ties to secure a hostage's hands. I can see you now, screaming at the screen "CUT THOSE ZIP TIE TAILS, FOOL!"

What's wrong with those who don't cut them? The same thing that's wrong with people who are OCD about them being cut.

Both, and almost anybody else, like me, invested in mutual funds. I'm no Wall Street Wizard, but from what I read just about every mutual fund has at least some oil company stock. Especially "nefarious" are those who complain about the high cost of energy while raking in the benefits of it.

Oil prices were already low enough that fracked wells were becoming marginal to operate at best. Then covid shut the economy down, and oil prices dropped off a cliff. Oil companies stopped pumping from expensive fracked wells because they were losing money. Economy came roaring back, because of...

Was in one of my local $1.25 Trees last week. Sign on the door said they were out of helium, so couldn't fill balloons. No word on when, or if, they would get more.

Maybe not the balloon. Helium shortage, you know. Helium is in such short supply that the National Weather Service has cut back on launching weather balloons.

Because that's what we Americans do. We blame our government for all our problems, so we don't have to shoulder it ourselves. We keep looking for a leader who can "fix" things for us to our satisfaction, never finding one because he/she doesn't exist.

My mother passed away 13 years ago. In the years before that, my brother and I would take her out to the local regional farmer's market on the Saturday before Mother's Day. We'd walk around through the aisles, looking at all the flowers together, talking to some of the vendors we knew. She'd get...

Depends. We put about 50 pounds of it in the freezer last November, for free. Guy hit it with his car and didn't want the meat, so we took it.

And therein lies the source of inflation. Too many people buying what they "need" no matter what the price. Even if I think I "need" it, if I don't have the money I don't buy it. I find a way to get along without it. My parents, children of the Great Depression, taught me that valuable lesson.

When I want fish I go to the freezer and get out a filet from a walleye I caught on the St. Lawrence River last August. While I can't say the fish didn't wander over into the Canadian side of the river sometime during its lifetime, I definitely caught it on the NY side of the border. I suppose...

Was this supposed to be actual Maine lobster, or the local variant? If the former, I don't know why you are surprised. Getting lobsters shipped from Maine to Florida these days can't be cheap, if it ever was. Couple that with the establishment probably having to pay higher wages just to keep...

When I stop to realize that I'm sitting here in a comfortable office chair, in a warm house, with broadband Internet, TV, and plenty to eat, that I'm not dodging missiles, drones, tanks, and artillery shells, somehow dealing with inflation doesn't seem quite so tough...

Dang! And we were going to put these out in the field to grow tomatoes to sell on our roadside stand. Maybe we should just sell the plants...

With great respect for your obviously superior experience, my posts are coming from MY experience of 60 years farming on MY ancestral 200 acre home farm. I do live on glacial till, on the top of a drumlin, but I have at least ten different soil types on those acres, and each one acts differently...

On ground that was a garden the year before, that et cetera would even include human foot traffic from planting, weeding, harvesting. And even if that's kept to a minimum, a rainy year the year before will do it all by itself. Actually, I find that tilling "virgin" ground, no matter what the...

I have found that an alfalfa sod will break up compaction nicely. Those tap roots will go down deep and break up the soil. Of course, they take about five years to complete the job...

You don't have the same soil type I do, that's obvious. Or the same tiller. My tiller has shoes on either side to set the digging depth. Maximum is about 3-4 inches. If I were foolish enough to take them off, then the side gearbox would give me maybe another inch before bottoming out. I'm fine...

When we first got our Tractor Supply tiller, we tilled a garden from the year before without plowing first. That was enough. We could tell it was too hard on the tiller, and we'd wreck it before long. Now, we always moldboard plow first.

Gee, the commercials always show smiling suburbanites with nice, clean tractors and clothes that never get dirty no matter what they are doing. Sigh. Another illusion, shattered...

If Coca Cola branched out into the fossil fuel business, would they make us call one of the products "Coke Brand Coke?"

You weren't wrong. While "moldboard" is the most common term, the others are used, as well.

Don't buy Coke unless there's nothing else. Pepsi is better, Mountain Dew better yet. But usually, I get the store brand of SODA in 2-liter bottles.

Going by the color scheme my tedder is a Kuhn, but they rebranded the same model for John Deere and New Holland, and probably others. My "haybine" is an Oliver, and was made by Owatonna before they merged with Gehl. They made an almost identical model for Ford. My 3-bottom Ford 101 plow was...

3M wants you to use "cellophane tape" instead of "Scotch Tape." But, "cellophane" is trademarked in some countries. Maybe we should just use velcro to fasten things together. Actually, what happened to "cellophane" and what is currently happening to Velcro are good examples of why companies...

Some companies are very sensitive about it. I've read author's guidelines that warned authors to use the term "facial tissue," or "Kleenex Brand Facial Tissue," instead of just "Kleenex," to avoid getting sued. Several years ago, a local coffee house owner named his place "Federal Espresso."...

My 70-year-old Case SC wears its "compromised paint," what there is left of it, with pride. I figure the guys who came back from WW2 and built that tractor built it to be used, not be some kind of show piece. It's been through the mill and back again, and keeps coming back for more.

No dealers around here that I know of. Can't remember of even hearing of Kioti before reading this thread. But, I have a JD dealer and a CNH dealer within a mile of each other, about 12 miles from this very spot.

Wasn't always that way. A jail escapee stole my mother's '55 Chevy, with a manual transmission(stick on the steering column), from our driveway in the late '50s. It was later recovered several miles away, abandoned. She got it back, but 2nd gear never wanted to work quite right afterward, so...

Uh-oh. You must be new to this. Take it from somebody who has been using tractors for over 60 years: those of us with a little experience under our belts know better than to make a fate-tempting statement like that, regardless of the brand/model.

I slept with my Case SC once, a very long time ago, at the end of a particularly long day. Fortunately, I woke up before I drove it off the field into the woods.

I've been thinking back, and can only think of three sleeve kits for sure, so I may have been wrong when I wrote 4. But destruction of the engine before rebuilding it? No, we didn't wait that long. My grandfather was the second owner of the tractor, so I don't know what kind of care it had...

When/If you get back to it you'll probably find out more stuff has gone bad, simply because it's spent the last two years in the barn, unused.

I'm 3 years older than that tractor, and it's put in more hours of work than I have. For several years, about half its life, it was the main tractor on the farm. If a tractor is used, things wear out, and this tractor has been used. Plenty. The only way you'll have one that "stuff doesn't...

Can't say much about most of those brands, as I have no experience with any of them. However, this one has been pretty reliable: My grandfather's Case SC, 70 years old, and still able to do a full day's work. Sure, it's had new sleeve kits put into it four times, the head's been replaced...

We learned from a booklet that had been put out by Cooperative Extension back in the 50s.

We never did "hang" the meat any longer than enough to let it cool out, usually overnight, because the meat cuts easier if it's cold. Same thing for deer. We always thought it tasted great. The idea of hanging meat to age it until it was old enough to get up and walk away again never had any...

Other things than overfishing can cause that. We've been taking an annual fishing trip to the St. Lawrence River since the 60s. 50 years ago, you could easily fill a bucket with yellow perch and rock bass. Not so now, but it's not because of overfishing. It's because of invasive species, like...

Ah yes, the Oil Crisis, caused by our then-heavy dependence on foreign oil, and OPEC countries cutting back production to bring up the price of crude. Prices didn't go up so awful much, if you could get the fuel. We were using all gasoline back then, and we felt the pinch, too. Because they...

I'm 72.

Back in the days when my parents owned the farm, Dad had a night job as a machinist to make things meet. But that job would be subject to periodic layoffs depending on how the company's sales were going. When Dad was laid off he couldn't collect unemployment insurance because he was also working...

https://www.mashed.com/243792/why-its-almost-impossible-to-find-horse-meat-in-the-u-s/

Not at all afraid of folks starting their own gardens - I'll even give them free advice on growing stuff. That way, once they find out how much work it is, and how easily something can come along and wipe out all that hard work, they no longer complain about every little defect, or the prices we...

I thought the same thing would happen when the Great Recession hit in 2008, and indeed the market made a big change. As I said, that was the year we switched from wholesaling our hay to retail, and we'll never look back. The hay market did take a dip at first, but we were able to hang on because...

My brother and I are the third generation of the family to own and operate this farm. We grew up here, and have no intention of leaving. However, for the past five years or so, we keep getting these postcards from real estate brokers telling us that they'd be happy to sell our farm for us if we...

It isn't always as simple as "my costs have gone up, so my prices have to go up." Supply and demand come into play, and you have to find the right balance for your situation. We have a small farm in Central NY. We get the vast majority of our revenue from selling vegetables on a roadside stand...

We put our diesel in 55 gallon drums and use a Harbor Freight hand crank pump to fill the tractor. We had to add a hose long enough to get from spout to tractor, but that wasn't a big deal.

We have an old IH 424 that we've used for many years. 2WD, ag tires. There have been times when we had to repair a rear tire and didn't get the ballast back in it right away, and believe me, we'd notice the difference. Not so much on dry, untilled ground, but for any kind of tillage, or when...

Nope. But I have seen somone who tried to clear a jammed corn picker with the tractor running. Of course, just seeing it was enough to teach me to NEVER do something like that. I haven't needed a safety switch as a reminder.

We got along with the seat switch for about the first year after we got our JD 4600, even though we found it annoying, but then it started shutting off the tractor every time I went over a bump. Since our other tractors, one from the late 60's and the other from the early 50's, never had such a...

Oh, I dunno. In my experience, they simply need to be educated. Mentioned before, we live near Syracuse, NY. We live near the suburbs, on a road that's a major route for commuters. In addition to selling horse hay retail from our barn, we've been running a farm stand since we were kids, growing...

My brother and I put up about 2000-2500 small squares a year, but weather last year kept yield to more like 1500. First dry, so the hay didn't grow, then damp/wet so that you couldn't bale it. We sell it retail by the bale out of our barn through the winter, and usually sell out. We bale with...

That has not been our experience at all. Must be either we are incredibly lucky, or you are incredibly unlucky.

Plastic sheets that are only used one season, then taken up and sent to a landfill, to be replaced with more plastic next year. And yet they call themselves "sustainable." We're too small to be a "truck farm," yet I've been growing vegetables for sale locally for 60 years. We bought a...

We got one of those 5-footers from Tractor Supply about four years ago to put on our JD 4600. Got it barely used for about half price of new. We have a farm stand and use it quite a bit more than you are proposing to use yours. It has held up well, considering. We had to replace one of the...

The previous owner of our IH 424 had problems with the front end raising when towing heavy loads uphill. He welded together a box, attached it to the front end, (There are points on that front end designed for mounting stuff) and filled it with firebrick. Problem solved. We left it on there for...

Our Frontier (aka John Deere) blower has two shear bolts, one in the universal and the other in the auger driveshaft. The manual has the specs - universal is an SAE size and the auger drive is metric. I got replacements at the JD dealer once, but that green paint they use must have real gold...

I'm in Central NY, near Syracuse, where the wind can blow in up to 200 inches of snow off Lake Ontario in a single winter. Back during the Blizzard of '93 in March, we got around five feet of snow. When it finally stopped, and we started digging out with an old Case SC and a homemade plow, it...

Well, yes and no. My brother was moldboard plowing with our JD 4600 and aftermarket cab, when he happened to drive up and over a head-sized rock. When he came down on the other side, the back window shattered into a million pieces. No limbs for several hundred feet. Plan is to eventually make...

60 years ago, when all we had to move snow was a home-built snowplow on our Case SC tractor, my grandfather bought an enclosure something like this, shown here on a Farmall H. Ours had a plastic windshield mounted on top. It did the job, cutting most of the wind and providing some heat back to...

Our late '60s IH 424, hauling in pumpkins for our farm stand in 2013. My grandfather's 1952 Case SC is behind it. Also, our John Deere 4600, blowing some early season snow out of the driveway in 2016. Like I said earlier, each has its advantages and disadvantages.

We have three tractors here, the oldest two are open station, the newest has a cab. Used the oldest two for 50 years and 60 years (originally my grandfather' tractor) respectively, plowed lots of snow with each. It was cold, but I was younger then and better able to take it. They are smaller...