winter projects
Return to DiscussionsWith 80 acres to mess with on a rough mountainside, it's way past due some development in the gardening farming direction. So, Been working on clearing fence row to close in several acres with old chainlink we have a bunch of. Top it with barb wire up to 8 ft and put electric on the outside to keep coons out. Coon and deer are the main garden gobblers. Been cutting fence posts and clearing the path with chain saw, also working on putting en engine in my old track loader, need it to finish making the path for fence. Hope I can get it done before spring arrives. But then I also need a good mowing machine to maintain it, one that will pick up the chopped grass and legumes for mulch and compost. Has to be 4x4 and hillside stable. A decent mower of that kind is $25,000 new right now. Which is about $24,000 beyond my budget for one. But since I have quite a range of odds and ends of junk laying around, looks like I have about everything needed to put one together. But it will take time, lots of shop time to make everything fit together. An old 4x4 subaru car, a 25 HP kubota engine with transmission and hydraulics, mounted on a frame that I can use for the basic mower frame. A 4 ft wide 3 pt hitch mowing deck. Need the fence done by March, and the mower by May. Don't know if I can manage it that soon with either one, but gonna try.
Guess I should update on my work. Toyota got fixed, after over a week of steady work on it. Whole list of things I found needed repair, timing chain, spark plugs, idler pulley bearing, axle boot, bushing in the front differential needed rebuilding, pulled the oil pan and cleaned it up, plus installed my old winch that used to be on the dodge. Been using it a week or so. Working on some logging to make the cash for new tires, the all season radials on it are not doing good in the mud, have to use the winch a lot to make up for it. Also need to get one of those slip sheet bed unloaders for it so I don't have to shovel load after load of compost. Need to clean out the horse barn and haul it all up to the garden area inside the fence. Got the skid steer to load it but need to unload easily as well. Probably can get the tires and sheet ordered before the weekend, then while waiting on them to arrive work on the fence gates and next week might do a quick trip up to KY to do a tree felling job on a friend's farm. I have lots of experience dropping trees and he has some leaning over a barn he wants cut. Probably take just a few hours of my time to rig the trees with the winch and get them pulled over backwards.I'm looking forward to peaceful gardening as the weather warms after all the struggle with mud an breakdowns.
Well the logs didn't sell for quite enough to get everything needed, so i got everything except the tires, will have to get out one more load to sell to get them. But they aren't critical necessity. I can pull the retreads off the suburban I put on it awhile back to get better traction for dirt/mud work. Not great, but better than what's on it. So next week I'll start off by getting the dump sheet installed. (There's a new harbor freight store in town and i discovered they had one of those unloader roll sheets, so I went and got it) and see how it works for dumping a load of stuff, get started hauling compost from barn to new garden site. I did order a new pair of shoe type sandals, naked shoes i could all em. My current pair is close to 2 years old and suffering from wear and repairs. Decided to get a new pair and use them for going places and the old ones for work until they fall apart to bad to repair. Then switch to the new ones and get yet another to keep clean for good lookin wear. The current ones are Teva omniums, the ones I just ordered are almost identical but are Camel Crown hiking sandals. good bit cheaper than the teva's, i hope they are good for some couple years wear time which seems to be what the teva's are good for. I need the protection of shoes but also the open ventilation of sandals, so i pick something that's a sort of hybrid.
the stimulus check just showed up, I didn't ask for it, I don't even want it really because I know what it's likely to do to inflation. But since I'm supposed to dump it back into circulation to help the economy I went ahead and dropped it on my bank account and ordered the tires i need to get around in the mud better an get work done with the truck. I'll use the rest to order some mineral dust from the old phosphate mines to put into vegetable production, and turn it over into society again by way of some good fresh produce. So my winter projects are now morphed into spring projects and on from here, ready to start planting garden finally. A bit late on some things, just fine for much of it since we're getting our last late frost tonight. record cold temperature for May 9. Average last frost is supposed to be about mid April.