Newest (Latest?) Addition

        I had about given up.  I placed the ad in the Miles Saver about five weeks ago.  I got three responses.  Two of them I rejected outright, as what they had to offer was close to junk status.  It would have taken lots of work and hard-to-find parts to get them back to usable.

    The ad said, “Wanted: Miller, Flex King, or Calkins chisel-rodweeder, 40 feet width.”  It ran for two weeks.  The three responses came during the second week.

    I drove about forty miles to a farm where there was both a Flex King and a Calkins.  The Flex King was 50 feet wide, a bit too much.  The Calkins would cut a 36-foot swath, with three 12-foot sections.  It was missing a drive shaft, and the tires were all rotted.  Both machines were semi buried in thirty years of dirt and grass.

      Going for either one of those machines was tempting because they were close, and I could get them from there to here with the 1959 Ford 4 X 4.  But either would have to have at least two new tires before I could move them, and once I got them here, I would have lots of work to get them field ready.

     A week went by.  I got a text from a man who was liquidating his mother’s estate, including a Calkins machine about the same one that I had looked at nearby, along with other machinery.  I asked for pictures.  This one was all above ground and had usable tires.

     The Goodwife and I went to take a look.  It was in fair shape but would take some work before it could go to the field.  The drawback, it was 75 miles from the farm, somewhere south and west of Otis, Colorado.

     I was right loathe to set off that far with the 4 X 4.  It uses quite a bit of gas and there aren’t many filling stations on the way.  It doesn’t have air conditioning.  It’s really hot this summer.

     Dave, the estate liquidator, gave me the name of a neighbor who does quite a bit of trucking when he isn’t farming.  I contacted him but he didn’t want much to do with transporting the thing.  He mentioned over-width permits and/or pilot car.  Moving it would cost as much or more than the machine.

      A week or more went by and I pondered how to move the Calkins.  Then Dave texted again.  His part-time hired man also hauls a lot of scrap iron to smelters in Denver and elsewhere.  He was willing to move the thing. 

      I contacted the hired man and we struck a deal.  It took them a few days to ready the machine for transport.  The wings fold up for transport, but when they hooked the tractor to it and began raising the wings, a hydraulic hose broke.  Once they succeeded in getting the wings up, they decided they should remove the tires from the wings in case they needed a spare tire enroute.

     All obstacles were soon overcome and Dave the scrap iron man took off about 7 a.m. on Thursday.  I went out to remove some fence no longer needed.  I thought 10 o’clock would be the earliest he could get there.  I also thought I would be able to see him arrive, but I didn’t.  He arrived before 10 a.m.

     He had unhooked the Calkins from his pickup and was pulling out of the yard as I approached from the east.  I flashed my lights, but he didn’t see me.  I phoned him and he returned. 

     He had made the trip in three hours.  There was, however, a drawback.  He had lost one of the driveshafts along the way. 

     It took us about an hour to hook up to my tractor, let the wings down, and put the tires back on the wings (he made the trip without a tire failure).  The entire time I was thinking how I would replace that driveshaft, a square shaft with a universal joint on one end.

     We went to the house to do the paper work.  I had to sign a bill of sale for the estate.  I had to write two checks, one for the machine and one for transport.  The Goodwife offered Dave her breakfast of peanut butter on toast topped with fresh peaches.  He took her up on her offer.  He said when he arrived and I wasn’t there, he planned to go to Limon to eat breakfast and then come back to finish the deal.  She saved him a trip to Limon.

      Dave left.  About twenty minutes later, he came back.  “Forget something?” I asked.  Without saying anything, he went to the back of his pickup and pulled out the drive shaft.  He found it at the junction of 28 and 3T, about seven miles from the farm.  One less thing to worry about.

     I have put in a few hours trying to get the Calkins ready to go to the field.  I’m not there yet.  There’s really no rush.  If it doesn’t rain, the weeds don’t grow.