Gene, the landscape around here is rather boring with all the bare ground but that sure beats shoveling snow!  All of my tractor-related discussions take place online these days since I no longer have any neighbors with an interest in old tractors.

Charlie, I've called central Louisiana home for better than 40 years now.  It's not a bad place to live: taxes are low, the climate is mild, hunting and fishing are good, and the air is still clean enough to breath.  The area I live in was pretty rural when I moved out here but there have been lots of people move out this way in the past 40 years - too many to suit me.

I've never farmed, I'm a retired electronics technician, but I've had a love for old iron since I was a kid in a small farming community in Tennessee.  My older sister married a farmer back there.  My back has gotten so bad that I don't even try to have a garden any more.

Alan,

After reading this I did a little touring around central Louisiana with Google maps street view.  I was in and South of of one of the national forests, but now I am not sure which one.  Looks like nice rural living with some very nice homes once out of the forest.    Also looks very flat with small towns.  No doubt nice living.

Charlie V.

Alan, good to see another ATIS guy posting here for a change. Maybe a few more will find their way in.
This photo from today is not mine but a good friend's restored 4020. With the sudden rise in temps the snow is starting to melt so it is time to get it out of the yard as much as possible so it will dry up sooner. Thats a 40 year old snow blower on a 43 year old tractor.

Ralph,  That blower mounted on the front like that really makes a nice outfit.  I had very little snow except some pile remnants.  Monday temps at 69F for the high pretty well erased them.  Supposed to be about 3 more days like that in a row.  Sure is nice.  Robins are back, too.  Now that it is warm enough to work on things, I find I am way behind.  I will be okay, though.  I am too old to be late anymore.  I need to work on the transmission shifting on my Farmall 1566.  Warm enough to tackle that now.  It is a cab tractor, so there is a fair amount of monkey business to be done to even get the top of the transmission, so I did not work on it in the cold shed.

Ron

Alan,

After reading this I did a little touring around central Louisiana with Google maps street view.  I was in and South of of one of the national forests, but now I am not sure which one.  Looks like nice rural living with some very nice homes once out of the forest.    Also looks very flat with small towns.  No doubt nice living.

Charlie V.

Charlie, you were probably looking at the Kisatchie National Forest.  I'm close to it, being a few miles east of Alexandria/Pineville.  There are some hills here and it's mostly wooded area.  A few miles further to the east the elevation drops and the land flattens out as you get closer to the Mississippi River.  Lots of cotton continues to be grown there.  Other crops grown in central Louisiana are soybeans, corn, milo, a few sweet potatoes, and a little further south, sugar cane.  And let's not forget crawfish!

Alan

Alan, good to see another ATIS guy posting here for a change. Maybe a few more will find their way in.
This photo from today is not mine but a good friend's restored 4020. With the sudden rise in temps the snow is starting to melt so it is time to get it out of the yard as much as possible so it will dry up sooner. Thats a 40 year old snow blower on a 43 year old tractor.

Ralph, I wonder if I could mount a front blower on my CaseIH DX24? would make a nice platform for it, maybe a 50 inch? Then I would want a cab on it, then hydraulic spout control and the list goes on.

warm weather has melted all but the biggest piles and drifts. Some ponding in the fields and about a 1 acre lake across my airstrip that will disappear as soon as the ground thaws enough for the water to get to the tile. Ground is wet and squishy everywhere I walk. Had 51 degrees yesterday with light rain all day and 39 degrees today. Heavy fog this morning. Spent all day yesterday doing my taxes and sent them today, so that chore is out of the way.

Gene

Gene, I know Case used to offer a snow blower for the front of their garden tractors. I have a brochure showing one from 1967.Complete with cab!.
Melting here too with highs in the 30s. We still have our "perma frost" so it just gets greasy on the surface by day and then re-freezes after the sun goes down. I'm taking advantage of that to move some grain from one farm to another before the real thaw hits. Right now the old Loadstar rolls along the roads like they are concrete.

After three days of thawing here not much bare ground to be found, except where most of the snow had already been plowed or removed or blown away.  I went out yesterday morning while snow was softened but not yet too soggy and cut a couple of swaths along the West side and across the front of the house with the blower.  Some places were a good 20 inches deep.  I have questionable grade from the foundation in a couple of spots along there so let the snow melt away further out.  The sump pump will run plenty later when the frost is out and spring rains come so getting rid of an inch or two of water now is not a bad thing.  Dang clay base.  Have the blower set to leave about two inches behind because it is used off pavement.  The two inches left are green grass now.  Air was only low 40s today but the sun was very effective.  33 degrees now at 11 pm.  Good to slow the thaw to allow runoff.  

Charlie V.

We are starting to see some bare ground here too with temps in the 30s this week. Bare grass in the yard where I cleared the snow away earlier.
Back about 1969 I could not wait for the snow to leave and had to get my big toy truck out to play with . This photo shows it parked for a photo. Dad's "V" snow plow in the background. That is a barrel of used calcium chloride (tractor ballast) on the back of the truck and as I recall it tipped off the truck a few minutes after I took this photo. Sliding around corners with unsecured loads. :-(

I got to work outside a little today. It's been decent a few days but the ground was thawed on top and frozen underneath. That resulted in about 4" of jelly... Today is the first that the water has been draining down decent. I had a list of about half dozen things that I wanted to accomplish today but I only got a couple done. I ran out of me long before I ran out of list.
One of my son-in-laws gave me about 50 partial sheets of plywood that he salvaged from a job they did and I had gotten it sorted out onto 3 pallets and covered it before the weather went in the dumper. Today I got the TO-20 out (which fired out very quickly thank you) and put the lift forks on the 3 point to move it all down the road to my west barn.
I don't recall that lift fork being that heavy to wrestle around and mount back when I built it years ago.
I backed into the heaviest pallet last and when I pulled the lever to lift it the hydraulics didn't hesitate at all. Trouble was that I was sitting there with the front of the tractor well off of the ground. :eek: I thought that I was going to do it all from the tractor seat but I had to get another pallet and split that load.
It felt pretty good to be out doing anything...

[ATTACH=CONFIG]827[/ATTACH],[ATTACH=CONFIG]828[/ATTACH]

Wednesday and Thursday were nice days at Mockingbird Hill. Thursday morning was spent doing much neglected house cleaning then afternoon outside raking stones from side of driveway since most of the snow has melted.
Had 2 days of nice warm sunshine and 50 degrees Nice weather to melt the snow. Today started raining a light sprinkle of rain. Grocery shopping this morning and rest and relaxation this afternoon.

Gene from Mockingbird Hill

Still waiting on the sun to break through the fog here in Sask. But at least there is a bit of melting happening.  Gene I am guessing the name of your place is based on the old song by Patti Page? I used one of her tunes in this video of the 39 Ford from last fall. It seemed appropriate for the time.
[video=youtube;FtoUHOS53wU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtoUHOS53wU&feature=youtu.be[/video]

We have a little less snow now than when this photo was taken a week ago. Using the 2090 Case to clear snow away from a grain bin I wanted to move the grain from.

Still waiting on the sun to break through the fog here in Sask. But at least there is a bit of melting happening.  Gene I am guessing the name of your place is based on the old song by Patti Page? I used one of her tunes in this video of the 39 Ford from last fall. It seemed appropriate for the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtoUHOS53wU&feature=youtu.be
https://youtu.be/FtoUHOS53wU

Yes, Ralph, Patti Page is my favorite singer and Mockingbird Hill is my favorite song of all time. Have a CD of her favorite hits, one of my few CD's. Patti died on Christmas day in 2013. She and her husband ran a maple syrup operation in I believe, New Hampshire. Just don't have performers like her today.

Gene

Yes, Ralph, Patti Page is my favorite singer and Mockingbird Hill is my favorite song of all time. Have a CD of her favorite hits, one of my few CD's. Patti died on Christmas day in 2013. She and her husband ran a maple syrup operation in I believe, New Hampshire. Just don't have performers like her today.

Gene

Also a favourite of my parents Gene. I still have a cassette tape (remember those?) of some of her more popular songs. I thought it made a good soundtrack for the videos showing the old Ford that my parents had in their wedding picture. I fixed the link to the video in the above post so it shows up here now.

When I was a kid, we had one of those wind-up record players, like a Victrola but a different brand.  We only had two records for it: "Mule Train" by Frankie Laine, and "Tennessee Waltz" by Patti Page.  I was one happy kid when they got me "Frosty the Snowman" to play on it one Christmas!  But Patti Page remains one of my favorite singers of all time and "Mockingbird Hill" is one of my all-time favorite songs as well.