What’s Up?

     The millet is up—up off the ground, where it has been since September 8.  The weather has cooperated by remaining dry.  Imagine that!  Dry weather in Eastern Colorado!

  

      This crop seemed charmed from the beginning, starting with a gentle ½”  of rain a few days after it was planted, to continual showers during wheat harvest ( another “go figure”), to the dry weather while it cured in the windrow.

     To top it off, the harvest concluded on Friday, two bins full and a little left over besides.  Saturday morning, it began to rain.  I finished cleaning the dregs out of the truck bed in a light shower, with thunder over-powering the whine of the shop vac.  The truck got a bath.  I stashed vacuum and headed for the house.

      Another thing up is the wheat, at least that I planted first, on September 9 & 10.  (Important activities like singing and attending family meeting interrupted wheat planting.)

     The wheat should be off to a good start, too.  I finished planting on Thursday.  The Saturday morning shower should insure a good stand.  Never one to press my luck, I did not clean out the drills.  May have to replant some, you know.

     The Autumnal equinox was up this week, too.  Always a time for reflection on the year(s) past, a time when I clean off the tractors and shed them, let them hibernate out of the weather until next spring when it is time to wake them. 

      I make reminder notes to myself for each machine (necessary because I can’t always remember), “Left turning brake”, Power steering pump”, “Adjust fast idle”, “Try to find new idler sprockets”.  The idea is to do those things during the late Fall or early Spring, when the weather is somewhat cooperative.  It doesn’t always happen.

     Then, I have to take time out of the spring work to do what I should have done earlier.  I begin to understand my Dad, who wasn’t real big on preventative maintenance.  Inertia becomes more important with age, especially the “bodies at rest” part.

     As the sun slowly sets in the west, the straight west, the Summer of 2017 also sets.  The fading sunset glow brightens the shadows.

      

Things Going Down

     Lots of things went down down on the farm this week.   The MET tower, for instance.

Now you see it.

Now you don’t.

      No, I did not knock it down with tractor or implement striking a guy wire, though I feared doing that a few times.

      Instead, a crew of two pulled in.  When they called to tell me the tower had been “decommissioned”, I suggested October would be nice.  The millet would be out of the way by then.

     No, they had in mind much sooner.  Like when?  Like tomorrow.  They would be very careful and not damage much of the crop at all.  They offered to pay damages, if necessary.  They had just finished a similar job in Nebraska and would be going to Peetz, CO when they finished here.

      We arranged to meet at the site at 4 p.m.  They were two reformed farm boys from Indiana with a tandem trailer pulled by a heavy-duty pickup.  They had tire trouble and were finishing up putting on a spare when I arrived to join them in the shadow of wind tower 119.

I weighed the damage they might inflict with the advantage of being rid of those guy wires.  I gave them the go-ahead.  It was Friday afternoon.  They would start work immediately, planned on finishing the job on Saturday with cleanup on Sunday.

     They were off by a week, finishing on the next Friday.  When they didn’t show up at all on Saturday, I called and asked if they had decided to take off Labor Day weekend.  No, they had to go to Denver to find a Discount Tire place.  They also searched out a salvage yard that would pay them something for the tower parts.  It was near Aurora.

       I went up Wednesday to see what was left for me to do to clean things up.  I was surprised to see them still there.  The tower was down and loaded on the trailer (each section weighing over 200 lbs.) and they were rolling up guy wire cables.

     They had a few problems. They thought the tower was made of tubes.  Instead, it was solid shafts, heavy and harder to cut.   

      They had more tire trouble.  They found Discount Tire had sold them underrated tires and inflated them to tire pressure (80 lbs.) for the correct tires for their vehicle.  After two more flats, they got all new tires (at Discount Tire’s expense, I hope).  They would finish rolling up and loading cable and head to Aurora with the recycle metal on Thursday.

     On Friday, they picked up the solar panels and the 6-volt batteries, all 16 of them.  There were three electrical boxes and some other junk.

       They took out the anchors holding the guy wires, down to two feet below the surface, they said.  I haven’t checked that yet.

    Unfortunately, they didn’t take the concrete pad on which the tower perched.  I will have to see what the company has to say about that.  It looks like a patch of weeds that needs a good plowing.  Woe unto the plowboy who tries that.  So I put a “fence” to avoid that fate.

      

     The tower made a path in the millet when it came down, here seen between the fence posts that mark the concrete pad.

     The other thing that went down on Friday was the millet crop.  A 36’ swather made fairly short work of the field.

    On Saturday, Cousin Janice’s cremains went down—in an urn into a vault in Pershing Memorial Cemetery.  Eleven of us attended the inurnment.  Not a bad turnout considering she died in 2011.  But that is another story.

  

    Finally, a little wheat went down Saturday evening following the funeral.  Wheat to plant, millet to pick up, it will have to wait.  This week is full of social activities, like singing and trip planning, and an actual trip.

 Seed cleaning.

    

The 820 Project

 

    

     There she sits, “looking as if alive,” to borrow from Robert Browning.  It actually is alive, as the picture shows the flywheel spinning.

     The 820 saw the light of day for the first time in over two years on Thursday, August 31, 2017.  It went down sometime in June of 2015.  About $5000 and many hours of labor later, it returned to life.

       In June of 2015, I shoved it into the red barn, thinking to have it running sometime in 2016.  Too optimistic.  The “new” crankshaft didn’t arrive until July 2016.  The freight truck was waiting for me when I returned from hauling a load of wheat to town.  It was right before harvest.

      Part of the teardown had been done, enough to know what parts I needed.  The freight guy and I unloaded a three or four hundred-pound package onto the old Dodge pickup.

     The crankshaft is heavy.  (Everything on that tractor is heavy.)

     The block containing head, pistons, and rods had to be moved forward to make room for the crankshaft installation.

Back together it goes.

      

 

      It was ready to run on August 2, but I could not get the cranking engine to start.  I had to limit myself to sporadic one-hour attempts.  I tried starting fluid, carburetor adjustments, point adjustments.  The dawn arrived when I decided maybe it was out of time. 

     This motor has two sets of points and condensers that supply spark to four cylinders.  One set of points supplies the back two cylinders, the other set of points supply the front two cylinders.  In checking the timing, I found that I had hooked the wrong points to the wrong cylinders.

      I reversed the wires and the thing started right up.  Go figure.  I don’t care to figure how many hours I spent solving that problem. 

      It took some cranking time to get oil and fuel pressure, but the diesel finally cackled and there we are.  There are still a few glitches to work out, but I think the old girl is about ready to go to the field.