Login

16

'round the pot-bellied stove / Western Ohio Update

« on: October 14, 2015, 09:50:45 PM »

Ralph, I'm sorry to hear of that awful harvesting weather.  Wish I could ship you some of what we've been having around here--aside from a couple of unseasonably cold and rainy days in a row in early October, it's been warm and dry, and seems like every bit of soybeans and darn near all the corn is in, everywhere I go.

Not being a farmer I don't have any harvesting stories of my own, but I've been busy.  Still working on figuring out what to do with some increasingly bad erosion in the little creek that flows through my north pasture.  It's doing the typical meandering thing that streams do, leaving bigger and bigger under-cut "cliffs" three or four feet high that I don't dare get near with the tractor (but which are hard to tell exactly where they are, from the tractor seat).   It's also undercutting my fence that parallels the road, where the creek goes under the fence and into a culvert.   The county soil/water conservation guy came and gave me some advice and I've talked with one contractor about some work, but haven't really hit on the right plan yet.

The other big project has been tearing down what's left of the little shed that once connected the old silo with the bank barn.   The walls are long gone but the roof remains, attached pretty securely on one end to the barn, attached by a few sheet metal screws to the silo unloader chute on one corner, and completely unsupported and hanging down on the fourth corner.   Been that way for years, near as I can tell.  A few months ago I started removing it but decided to leave a little bit of it as an overhang for the barn door below it.  Easy to imagine, hard to figure out exactly how to do.  And of course the project expanded to include rebuilding the door and door frame below the little roof, since the old stuff wasn't solid enough to use as part of the new roof supports.   Here's a "before" photo and some progress photos.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]918[/ATTACH]  [ATTACH=CONFIG]919[/ATTACH]  [ATTACH=CONFIG]922[/ATTACH]  [ATTACH=CONFIG]920[/ATTACH]  [ATTACH=CONFIG]921[/ATTACH]  [ATTACH=CONFIG]923[/ATTACH]  [ATTACH=CONFIG]927[/ATTACH]

Still lots to do but I'm hoping the rest goes more quickly, now that all the behind-the-scenes infrastructure is in place.  I'm doing my best to make this repair worthy of the barn and those who came before me.

Dean

October 15th update:

17

'round the pot-bellied stove / Western Ohio Update

« on: August 20, 2015, 07:49:51 AM »

Gene, I'll join Charlie in wishing you a peaceful rest and a quick recovery from whatever's up with your liver.

That's a big rock pile in your woods, long time accumulating it (I hope).  The one I used as a quarry last week wasn't that big, and I didn't move 100% of it, only the stuff that was loose and accessible, left the lower dirt-covered stuff for some other time.  I'm not sure I have enough to really shore up the eroding curve in the little creek through my pasture--the part I'm worried about is where it goes under my fence and out to the road, since the big old fenceposts on both sides of the creek have been eroded around to the point where the posts are leaning and no longer really stable.  I'm off work today so might go over to the local soil/water conservation district office and see if they can recommend anything.

I need to run into town anyway, come to think of it, since I got reminded last night about the Slime issue.  Went out to brush hog a little and noticed the right rear tire on the 620 was a little low, and then while filling it up I noticed a thorn sticking out of one of the front tires.   Pulled the thorn out and immediately heard a hiss of air.  The rear tire is just a slow leak but now the front one is unusable, goes flat in just a few minutes, so I took it off the tractor and will drop it off at the Heritage co-op to get fixed.   Maybe stop by Tractor Supply and look at some Slime.  #*&! osage orange thorns anyway.

Charlie, thanks for the kind comments about my place.  I didn't replace the actual roofs on all the barns--the previous owners did that about a dozen years ago--but they only did the main roofing and left the old wood fascia boards around all the edges.  Many of them had rotted and started to fall off by now, so a few months ago I had them all replaced with new lumber covered with red aluminum to match the roofs.   The barns all need some repairs here and there to the wood siding and the big sliding doors, and they all need paint, but I ought to be done worrying about the roofs for a long time.

I have great memories of the summer, 1977 or 78, when I worked for a dairy farmer and in addition to normal barn chores had to paint his big old classic bank barn and two or three smaller outbuildings.  Me and a brush and a long extension ladder, classic barn red for the siding, white for the trim (and there was a lot of trim, lot of old-craftsman pride evident in the construction).  Took some creativity (and risk) to get up to the peak on each end of the main barn, and took the whole summer to finish everything, but finish it I did and the place looked terrific.  Had a lot of different jobs and responsibilities since then but few have involved the same sense of tangible accomplishment.   I think about that sometimes when I look at my barns now, but I figure my high-ladder days are behind me.

Tracy and I hope to make it over to Portland at least briefly on Friday the 28th.  Got some family activities going on also so will need to see how things work out.

Dean

18

'round the pot-bellied stove / Western Ohio Update

« on: August 16, 2015, 05:12:18 PM »

A year or so ago I was considering using Slime, since I kept getting thorns in the tires on my little utility trailer and on the front wheels of the tractors.   Also thought about having the tires filled with foam rubber.  Never really followed through on either idea, just had the tires fixed and put them back on.   Only had one more thorn since then, just a week or two ago on the trailer, and likewise had it fixed and put it back on.  Probably continue doing that unless the flats really start being a problem again.

I spent a good while today doing chores with the Super M.   Cut two trailer-loads of branches from trees along the driveway and hauled them to a burn pile (one of many I'm accumulating in various locations).   And also hauled a load of rocks to a curvy place in the little creek that cuts through my pasture, since it's eroding pretty badly in one spot near the fence.  There was a big rockpile at the other end of my property, next to the neighbor's soybean field, obviously accumulated over many years of picking them from the field and tossing them to the side, and it made a handy quarry for my erosion-control efforts.  We'll see how it works.  Felt good to get those chores done but by mid-afternoon I was ready to come in.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]910[/ATTACH]  [ATTACH=CONFIG]911[/ATTACH]  [ATTACH=CONFIG]912[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]913[/ATTACH]

Dean Vinson
Saint Paris, Ohio

19

'round the pot-bellied stove / Western Ohio Update

« on: July 05, 2015, 06:24:53 PM »

Ralph, those wildfires are amazing, and not in a good way.   I know you've been mentioning the lack of rain this year--is that the main reason the fires are so big?   Hope the smoke is the worst you have to contend with.

Doesn't seem like there'd be much risk of big wildfires in this part of Ohio this year, since the days with rain seem to have way outnumbered the dry days over the past few months.  Sure different from a few summers ago, 2012 maybe, when relentless hot and dry weather just baked the lawns and farm fields practically to a crisp.

I've spent most of the last few days clearing out more osage orange trees from various parts of my place.  This afternoon I ran into a big grapevine that was in some surrounding trees also, so I used the little Kubota and a chain to pull the vine down.   It just kept coming.  

[ATTACH=CONFIG]899[/ATTACH]

The Kubota seems to have taken over from the Super M and trailer as my default go-out-to-cut-trees equipment, at least when I'm working relatively close to the house.  It'll fit right up next to the door of the little building where I store firewood, where the Super M is too big to go, so I've been hauling cut wood with the loader bucket rather than the tractor and trailer.   I still like the tractor and trailer if I'm going way back away from the house, since it's nice to have the trailer for chainsaw gas, bar oil, extra chain, work platform when I need one, etc.

Dean

20

'round the pot-bellied stove / Western Ohio Update

« on: June 22, 2015, 10:58:20 PM »

Wonderful photo of the Ford, Ralph!

Gene, as you know I don't live all that far south of you but there's been less rainfall here--a lot compared to normal, with rain almost every day, but not like what you've been facing.  Most fields in the area look fine except for a few low spots, most roads have been unaffected, etc.  And this past Sunday turned out surprisingly nice, contrary to the forecast, with no rain all day and good dry air most of it.  I took advantage of the break to mow the yard around the house and then get out the 620 and brush hog the pastures that I could get to without crossing a creek.  Ground was mighty wet in a few places but manageable and the goats seem to like the freshly-cut pasture.

Dean

21

'round the pot-bellied stove / Western Ohio Update

« on: June 12, 2015, 11:44:48 PM »

My small hayfield just produced its first cutting, thanks to the efforts of a hardworking young kid who lives a mile or so down the road.  Only about 20 years old, studying agriculture, working full time when school's not in session, and has a hay business on the side to bale for people in return for half of the hay (which I have to say doesn't seem like a very big payoff for everything he puts into it).  Shifting weather forecasts and balky equipment didn't make it easy this past week but he pulled it off, and the hay looks, feels, and smells good and it was all in the barn prior to today's thunderstorms.

Wednesday evening he'd raked the main field and started to bale by the time I got home from work, but that left the little meadow by the orchard and the little triangle of land out by the waterway from the neighbor's field still to be raked--which made a nice task for the Super M.   I took the camera along and got some bouncy hand-held video.  

[video=youtube;4ooxR2kZZdw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ooxR2kZZdw[/video]

Dean
Saint Paris, Ohio

22

'round the pot-bellied stove / Western Ohio Update

« on: June 03, 2015, 07:05:09 AM »

Gene, I bet that'll be a very nice shop indeed.

The rains weren't quite as heavy down here but there were some powerful (but brief) storms Saturday night.  Sunday morning we noticed a couple of big trees by the side of the road just a little ways away from here that had been hit by lightning and split.  Pretty sobering to contemplate the sheer force it would take to tear a tree in half like that.

Dean

23

'round the pot-bellied stove / Western Ohio Update

« on: May 30, 2015, 01:43:22 PM »

Thanks very much, everyone!

Beautiful outside today although rain is forecast for later on, so I've been out trimming some more trees.  Pretty much a never-ending task.  Thought the view from the ladder was pretty nice and happened to have my cell phone with me, so took this photo.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]882[/ATTACH]

Dean
Saint Paris, Ohio

24

'round the pot-bellied stove / Western Ohio Update

« on: May 22, 2015, 09:40:39 PM »

Hello, gents, glad to take a few minutes and read through the recent posts and catch up.  Time sure zips past.  

I spent pretty much the whole day today working on the lawn in front of the house, smoothing and grading and re-seeding a big bare dirt area that had been excavated last fall when I had a new heating and cooling system put in.  I'd done the rough leveling a couple of times already over the past few months, but today was a good opportunity to really finish it off.  Used the 620 and rear blade for a little while, then the Kubota, and then the garden rake.  That last one is hard to beat for the finish work, but right now my back is telling me I'm not 25 anymore.  But it's done except for some watering, hopefully just this weekend since the forecast shows a good chance of rain every day for a week or so after that.

A while ago I'd mentioned cleaning up the row of apple trees in the orchard.  Two of those trees had split and halfway fallen over but were still living, and I'd mostly cleaned them up but had left the main trunks and a few branches for later.   Yesterday was "later," so those stumps are now just about flush with the ground and the burn pile has grown back up a little bit.  Gene, I'd be happy to welcome you (and any other list folks who might be in the area) sometime--I'm really having fun cleaning the place up and would be honored to show it off a little.  

[ATTACH=CONFIG]880[/ATTACH]

I seem to go through chainsaw chains pretty quickly, or at least "sharpenings."  Darn little easy cutting; most of it is either osage orange wood that's hard as a brick or assorted stumps and weed trees that I'm trying to cut down low enough to not be an obstacle even for the finish mower (hard to keep the chain out of the dirt sometimes).   There's a really nice hardware store in Saint Paris, five miles from my house, and they do a good job sharpening the chains.  I bet I've been by there at least once or twice a week for the past couple of months, dropping off one chain and picking up the newly-sharpened other one.  Their chainsaw guy thinks I might have better luck with a carbide chain on the osage orange trees, but I haven't tried one yet.  Am thinking I might get one just for use on cutting the osage logs into firewood length, rather than the general clearing work.

In other news I'm happy to announce that I got married last Saturday.  Tracy has come to tractor shows with me several times so she's met Gene and a few others from the list.  We'd been together for five years and had long known this day would come but were happy to let the planets gradually align.  Very nice indeed to finally get there.  We kept the wedding pretty simple and low-key, which suited both of us fine and made it easy to focus our time on working on this place--which is pretty much what we'd have been doing anyway.  Although it was nice to be able to say "But sweetheart, I have to get the 620 out--we need that back lane to look good in case we take folks on a hayride."  

Dean
Saint Paris, Ohio

25

'round the pot-bellied stove / Western Ohio Update

« on: May 03, 2015, 12:44:58 PM »

Ralph, great photo of your 40 in the field--what an iconic scene.

Gene, Tracy has been working in the garden here and that scene with the black plastic looks mighty familiar to me.  She'll work on it some more this afternoon--even has some blue potatoes to plant.

I've been cleaning up the orchard--there were several good-sized apple trees that hadn't been tended in many years and were all overgrown with weed trees and briars and honeysuckle, and a few of the apple trees had split down low and halfway fallen over.   At the far end of the orchard there was a long-buried junkpile with a young walnut tree growing out of one end of it.  A few long days with the chainsaw, the little Kubota with loader, and a bonfire, and the place is looking much better.   The apple trees are mostly cleaned up although I still need to finish up the two trees that had split.  The junkpile is gone and I think I managed to save the walnut tree.  This morning, after I'd hauled the last of the assorted non-burnable junk out of the pile and set the last soggy wooden scraps on the remains of the bonfire, I needed the 620 and rear blade to smooth out the dirt where the junkpile had been.   I suppose back-blading with the Kubota bucket would have gotten the job done also, although more slowly and not as much fun.  

[ATTACH=CONFIG]870[/ATTACH]  [ATTACH=CONFIG]871[/ATTACH]

By way of comparison, this video from July of last year shows my first passes with the brushhog counter-clockwise around the same row of apple trees shown in the first photo above.

[video]https://youtu.be/uV3JIfSzSPk[/video]

Dean

26

'round the pot-bellied stove / Western Ohio Update

« on: April 06, 2015, 11:28:14 PM »

Wow, Gene, you sure know your way around a variety of machines!

Dean

27

'round the pot-bellied stove / Western Ohio Update

« on: April 02, 2015, 08:19:43 PM »

Hi Gene, yes, it was mighty nice out earlier this week, and looks good for the weekend also.  I have a long list of inside-the-house projects also but on a nice spring day it's sure more fun to go work on the outside jobs.

Ralph, good photo of your Massey stuck in the mud.  I'd tried to use the Kubota's bucket to get myself unstuck but didn't have enough hydraulic power, and even with four-wheel drive and differential lock and the loader bucket lifting and pushing I couldn't back out.  That little tractor is right handy but I guess it does have its limits.

Dean

28

'round the pot-bellied stove / Western Ohio Update

« on: March 31, 2015, 10:48:47 PM »

Nice afternoon for outside work, so I made a lot of progress cleaning up an old junk pile near the back of my place.   A weekend or two ago I'd had a fire on top of the pile to burn the old branches, which is what the pile mostly looked like at that time, branches plus a bunch of old bunched-up fence wire and steel fence posts.   After burning all the branches I could see there'd been a big mound of dirt beneath them.  Took the little Kubota out there today and started digging, and it turned out the dirt was really nice topsoil, although it was heavily sprinkled with old osage orange branches, fence posts, bits of fence wire, a couple of tires, and a tree that grew horizontally out of one side (like it had been pushed over horizontal when very young) and then turned vertical.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]851[/ATTACH]

After a couple of hours I had most of the pile separated, with the topsoil in a new pile waiting to be hauled off to my front yard where I needed it for some lawn repairs.  In the photo above you can see the biggest osage log leaning up against what remains of the pile--I just shoved it out of the way rather than hauling it to the separate wood pile since it was so heavy.

That spot is a good walk from the house and barns, and I made the walk several times.  I was by myself today so had to walk back to get the Super M and wagon when I was ready to start hauling the dirt away, and then after hauling two wagon loads I had to walk back out there to retrieve the Kubota.

On the way back in with the Kubota I thought I'd use the bucket to back-blade some deep muddy ruts I'd made with the 620 a few weeks ago.  Promptly got the thing stuck, and the Super M was still hitched to the loaded wagon and parked out by the house, so I walked back to the barn and got the 620 to pull the Kubota out.   Then put the 620 away and walked back to get the Kubota, and by then I'd learned my lesson and left the muddy ruts for some future and drier day.

Unloading that wagon with my trusty scoop shovel took longer than loading it with the Kubota, but as my fiancee likes to tell me it "keeps me off of Hell Road."  All in all a nice day.

Dean Vinson
Saint Paris, Ohio

29

'round the pot-bellied stove / Western Ohio Update

« on: January 08, 2015, 08:26:08 PM »

> I took this pic to try and show the sundogs that were out this morning.

Ralph, nice photo.   I'm surprised you didn't hop in the Mercury and take it out for a spin, though.  

Dean

30

'round the pot-bellied stove / Western Ohio Update

« on: January 07, 2015, 07:06:22 AM »

Ralph, 32 below is some serious cold.  Years ago I spent a year at Thule Air Base, Greenland, and by the end of my tour I'd gotten comfortable with temperatures of zero F, ten below, etc.  But thirty below is just cold no matter how you look at it.

Here's a little clip of my snowplowing practice yesterday.  I need to get a GoPro... holding the camera with one hand while trying to operate the throttle, clutch, steering wheel, and hydraulic lever with the other doesn't make for ideal videos (or tractor work).

[video=youtube_share;GlMJ-tuVhvk]http://youtu.be/GlMJ-tuVhvk[/video]

Dean
Saint Paris, Ohio