Breaking in my new toys... from Yeehaw! to Uh oh!

[jimmyj]

I always find your posts interesting Spiveyman. Not always happy but you sure have a lot of experiences!!

 

[Spiveyman]

...Not always happy but you sure have a lot of experiences!!

That's a very delicate way to put that! Thanks.

Yeah, I get into my share of "experiences" for sure. Reminds me of a few quotes. When I was running the beef buisness I would always look for fun western quotes to put at the bottom of recipe cards and other materials that we'd give out. A few of these really hit home with me:

"There are three kinds of people: The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. And the rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves."

I'll just let you all guess which kind of person I am. But I suppose we all aspire to be that first kind of person - thus the draw of TBN. That could kind of be like the TBN motto - "We're here for those who are the third kind, but want to be the first."

Then there's the quote that's pretty much the antitheses of TBN:

"When youre tryin' somethin' new, the fewer people who know about it, the better."

Instead of heading this bit of wisdom not only do we share our new experiences with everyone on the internet, but we usually document our "fun" with pictures or video!

And lastly, about all of those "experiences" I seem to have, here's one that gives me hope, and I offer it to the rest of you:

"Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment."

At this rate, can you imagine the amount of good judgement I'm building up?!?!

Spiveyman

 

[texasjohn]

To mis-paraphrase an old saying..."Here come the judgment, here come the judgment!

Hang in there, spiveyman, you will soon be just as judge-full as the rest of us

 

[sandman2234]

Rule number one, never, never, NEVER throw anything away that might even remotely fit a tractor!
Rule number two, if you run out of space, NEVER throw anything away that might fit a tractor.
As far as my $40 experience, I removed my right side steering cylinder, along with the WHOLE right side of the front axle. (two wheel drive model). I couldn't get the end of the cylinder loose, and didn't want to ruin a nut (or worse) removing it. I carried the entire unit up to a local hydraulics repair place that normall isn't open on Saturday, but the guy I talked to said he would be at the shop that morning, and come on down. I got there, and he laughed about me bringing the half axle, but took one look at my un-opened bag of John Deere parts and said that probably wouldn't fit anyway. (I agreed which is why the bag hadn't been opened, expecting to need to return them to JD.) He rummaged around a few minutes, brought out the right size parts, took 3 minutes to disasemble my cylinder (welded on end caps) and had it rebuilt in less time than it took for me to walk to the truck to get my walllet. He quoted me the price, I paid, and left. The next week the other side went out in exactly the same manner. Remembering the statement he had made about coming out to my house and rebuilding the other one if needed, I made a call and the following Saturday he came to my house, rebuilt it on the tractor, and charged me the same $40. I gave him a $10 tip, plus a case of beer. (I don't drink and a friend gets a case a month as a company benefit) so we use it for "trading materials)
Glad you got it back running!!!
After my last couple of days moving 5 truckloads of dirt to the back yard with a pond scoop, I considering coming out there and stealing that front end loader off your tractor!!!
David from jax

 

[Spiveyman]

Rule number one, never, never, NEVER throw anything away that might even remotely fit a tractor!
Rule number two, if you run out of space, NEVER throw anything away that might fit a tractor...
David from jax

Uh oh. I am in SERIOUS violation of rule #1. My grandpa however must have chartered the rule. There was so much stuff in the barn that I could not even begin to identify when I bought that farm. I haven't gotten rid of all of it, but I did some major cleaning. I actually rented one of those huge dumpsters that is almost the size of a tractor trailer. I filled it up... TWICE with old stuff from the house and the barn. Most of it was bona fide junk, although I'm sure there were some things the TBN faithful would have appreciated. I just didn't have the time or patience to sift through it all. HOWEVER, I plan to be moving back out to the farm in the next few months, and when I do will resume my cleaning up of the place to make it inhabitable. Since you were so kind as to enlighten me as to rules 1 and 2, if I find anything good, I'll set it aside with your FEL, and you can pick it all up when you come get that. Deal?

 

[sandman2234]

I learned that rule one saves a bunch of money on a regular basis.
Before sending anymore of that "JUNK" to the scrapyard, you might seriously consider taking a few pictures and posting them, or better yet, send them to me. I come from a long line of junk collectors and some serious money has been made from objects found in purchased properties. My daughter still has a 1956 Daffey Duck comic book picked up out of a stack in an old house my Dad purchased. Mint condition, because when she asked for one, he reached down and grabbed one a few down so it wouldn't have the stains from sitting all those years. Mint condition and she is proud of it. Out of that same house came several neat items, such as a couple of kids "peddle cars" and ICE chests.
One mans junk is another mans treasures, so identify it before you send it to the scrap yard. (you did sell the junk, as opposed to paying somebody to haul it off, right!!)
David from jax

 

[Spiveyman]

Howdy all. I am slowly but surely getting to my project of removing those stumps. What I wouldn't give for a back hoe, but in the mead time... for a sneak preview here's a little thread I just started to pay tribute to Markham Welding:
How can you tell if your toothbar is made in KY?

So here's the project:


That's my front yard as it looks today. Sorry that I don't have great before/after shots. There's a "crown" to the yard as it goes out towards the road. One that is not comfortable mowing on. I have slid off my mower twice (thank goodness the mower never turned over) and am not real happy about that. So I decided to regrade the yard (inspired by 3RRL). The only problem is that there was about 8 trees planted randomly right on the crown. The roots have to come out before I can regrade the yard. I cut down the trees and now have to get the roots out.

In the absence of a back hoe I am using a mattox and my FED. The first rootball (maple tree) took me about 5 hours to dig out. Granted I'm not very good at this and didn't really know what I was doing, but I got it. The second took about 45 mins, but was a pretty wimpy rootball. Not really sure what the difference was.

By the way, the steering cylinder that I just replaced is leaking like crazy. Already had to put another whole bottle of power steering fluid in, but I'll deal with that when I get around to it.

Then I came to the mother of all root systems. I have no idea what kind of tree was there. Don't even remember what it looked like, but the roots are rediculous. The base of the tree didn't seem that big, but the roots are HUGE! I started digging around the thing and couldn't get anywhere. I was uncovering roots 12" in diameter, about 6 of them coming out of this stump and a million or so of every size smaller. I spent two days digging on that thing with my tractor and a mattox by hand. I broke off nearly every tooth on my bucket, but finally got it out of there. Here's the toothbar:

When I can afford it I'm going to replace it with a Markham. I've also decided that I'm only going to take out the stumps that I have to. The rest that are in the middle of the yard I'm just going to burry when I regrade the lawn. They have already been ground down, so it won't take much to cover them up.

It'll be a little while before I get to the actual grading part. I have a fence that I want to take out as well, and in the mean time we hope to be moving into the house soon, so I also have to do major renovations to the inside of the house. All in time...

 

[EddieWalker]

Sure sounds like you are keeping busy and have a list of things to do. I think it's better to have a bunch of stuff to do then nothing to do, but then I've never had nothing to do, and don't know what that's like.

It is crazy how two exact trees just a short distance apart can be night and day in how their roots are. I don't cut my trees down anymore because the rootball is so hard to get out. When I did do that, I really struggled with them on my backhoe, and never want to do that again. I know it's too late for you now, but if you ever have the choice, take the tree out wholeand let the weight of the tree take out the roots all at once.

Keep on plugging at it. One at a time is better then none.

Eddie

 

[Spiveyman]

Thanks Eddie. Your comments were some of the first I read on TBN about tree removal. I was thoroughly convinced that whole tree removal with a back hoe is the best way to do it. I just figured that without the back hoe there was no other way than cut and dig. However, I have two trees left on that stretch by the road and I'm going to try to get clever and see if I can get them out that way with the tools I have.

Speaking of the "tools I have" - this is for sale just down the road from my farm.

Sorry for the bad picture, I snapped that with my phone. It ain't much to look at, but I wish I could have taken it for a "test drive" to see if I wanted it. I bet I could have made short order of those stumps and remaining trees with this. Eddie, it reminded me of the bull dozer you used for your lake. Just curious, but how much of a nightmare do you think it would be to buy something really used like this one. I don't know how much they are asking or what kind of condition it is in. I'm not the mechanic most of you all are out there in TBN world. I can't even weld (yet). So it's a tad scary to me.

Have any of you had luck buying old stuff like this for projects, or is it just better to rent one each time you decide you want to start a project?

 

[johnamon]

How far down the road? Do you think if you stopped in you could get the owner to drive up and pull the remaining stumps for you for a few bucks?

 

[Spiveyman]

Yeah, I seriously thought about that as well. It's about 2 miles. Is that a long distance for something like this to travel? Can you run that up the road, or does it have to be loaded on a trailer? I had thought about offering the guy some money to come finish this work up because it's sure not earning him anything sitting in that field.

 

[Bartcephus]

Just finished reading the whole entire thread. Took me about 3 days between work, eating, sleeping etc. What a saga. But it made me realize that we have a lot in common in the past couple of years. TBN is a great area to meet some really really nice folks. Not to get to mushy... but I am so so uh well um very very proud to be able to be a part of this TBN group.

Hey... its a new year, new opportunities and another chance to battle the challenges life throws our way. God Bless each and every one of you....

 

[sandman2234]

Probably a little further than your neighbor is going to want to drive that thing, but you never know till you ask. You might want to talk to him about it, just in case somebody needs to "test drive" it. Plus, if he sells it, they might drive right past you house and reach over and pull the stumps out of the ground while the machine is still on the lowboy. The new owner might also need to make a few dollars to help pay for the shipping, also.
You don't want that thing, as you have enough to tear up with what you have....
David from jax

 

[Spiveyman]

Well, this is a somewhat sad post for me. I don't know how many will find this since my thread has been pretty much dormant for a while. My life has been in flux as many of you know, and as a part of that I am having to sell my farm. We signed a contract on it last night, and yes the 6610 was a part of the deal (Sorry again Sandman - now you'll have to find another FEL). You're probably better off though, I was pretty rough on yours. Also, I haven't been able to get a steering cylinder to hold fluid since last winter. I have replaced it 4 times, 3 rebuilt ones and then finally I ordered a New Holland one. Put it on and it worked great for an hour or so, then the next thing I know there's steering fluid spraying all over the front wheel again. (Yes I was trying to dig out another stump) I might have gotten one bad cylinder in the mix, but not 4 of them, so I figure I'm doing something wrong. If I'm able to get back on my feet and buy some more land some time in the future, I'll try to figure out what I was doing so that I won't go through that mess again. Or maybe I'll just use the tractor the way it was intended to be used rather than trying to make it work like a bull dozer and back hoe. Anyway, thanks to all for all the advice that got me this far on that thing. I'll check in from time to time and hopefully in a few years I'll be back in the seat again, breaking my new.... uh I meant breaking IN my new tractor.

Spiveyman

 

[sandman2234]

I can live without "my FEL" but hope things turn around 4 you soon! Just because you don't have a tractor doesn't mean we don't want you to stick your head in the door every now and then and say howdy.
David from jax

Phone when you can.

 

[hawkeye08]

I suspect that there are more than a few TBN posters that don't currently own a tractor or land (at least more land than the 1/4ac the house is on)... stay active, things will turn around. Best wishes....

 

[texasjohn]

I had been wondering what was happening with you.... have enjoyed your posts and messages and been missing them.... Sorry things haven't worked out lately but after a while you'll be back on your feet again. It'll take a while, these things do, but you've got a spark that is unique and I expect it'll serve you well and look forward to your future posts on TBN.

Best wishes, friend, and know that I and many here on TBN are pulling for you!

 

[Spiveyman]

Thanks y'all. I appreciate the kind words, as always, and yes, I'll still poke around here to keep up with stuff. While I haven't posted in a while, I still check 3RRL's log mansion updates, and Eddie's Lake updates, and a few other's that catch my eye. This is like my version of "house wives," only opposite, TBN is like "yard husbands." When my wife turns on those shows I can come here and find sanity.

We're about 2 - 3 weeks from closing on the farm. We're going to rent a house for a while as I keep looking for work. We're actually thinking about moving to North Carolina hoping the stronger economy will have a job for me. My dream of course will still be to find some land some day that we can afford and put some horns back on it. I miss my cattle as much as I'll miss my tractor. People around here think I'm nuts, most for just wanting cattle, the rest for wanting cattle with horns. When I had my beef business I had about 100 black aprons printed up with our brand on them and the slogan, "Real cattle have horns." Funny but people up here in feeder cattle country didn't really take to that.

Anyway, I think moving on and selling this place will help us get our lives turned around and hopefully there are blessings just around the corner. I always keep the faith that there are.

 

[doall]

just remember it don't matter how many cattle you own or tractors. You are still the same man. Stay with us. You'll bounce back. Keep your head up.

 

[TripleR]

As a young man, I was pretty close to where you are now. My brother and I sold all of our equipment and didn't own a tractor for several years. We were farming part time, so no land was sold.

He kept working and I finished college. We never did get back into farming, but own several tractors and enjoy working on our farms, Now that I am retired, I have even more time to spend on them working with my wife.

Hang in there and just because you no longer own land or a tractor doesn't mean you don't have a LOT to contribute here. I look forward to future posts.