[mitchmaine]

hey andy,
i had a good friend that worked steers and bulls in the woods. he drove with lines like a team of horses. they had ringbolts in the yoke( like hame rings) and the lines went to their noserings. he sat behind and drove them like horses. wondering if something like that would work for you? hook your pole into the t-pin and go. most of the work cultivating seems to be steering the cultivator and worrying about the plants. don’t know if that would work for you or not. just a notion.

[mitchmaine]

hi ed,
is there a pawl on the lifting arm that holds the cutter bar off the ground? if so, you can rotate it up and out of the way so that your pedal lifts and drops the cutter bar without the pawl catching. and when you want to carry it up, turn the pawl back down and it catches in one of two positions, just off, and higher off the ground. the pawl itself is adjustable, threaded with two nuts on two sides of a clamp. if you lengthen it out it should seat in those slots better and shouldn’t fall on its own. hope that isn’t too confusing. watch out for the lifting arm. if it falls to the ground on its own, it could give you knee a good whack on the way by.

[mitchmaine]

we got a border collie a few years ago. of course, he herds everything. he doesn’t seem to care for the swine, but he loves to herd chickens. we move them fairly often, but regardless of the shape of the fencing, he beats a circular path around it and runs it till his path is inches deep. we call them his crop circles, and they look it after we move on. oh! the point is, sinse he has taken over the job, nothing hits our henhouse, day or night. hawks, owls, varmint, nothin”. now that i have said it, i expect to eat my words, but there you have it.

[mitchmaine]

jen,
penny caught a racoon eating a chicken through the wire fence. he (the coon)grabbed the hen and held it to the wire and munched it through the fence. i shot the critter with her (pennys) blessing, no having heart that night. the only remains were the head feet and some feathers and blood.

[mitchmaine]

Hi ed,
nice mower. Looks and sounds great. Tuned , oiled and sharp, they are supposed to run like a sewing machine. Not sure I ever got that close, but this spring I chose to adjust my lead, cause its always been behind. It’s a job, separating the whole cutter bar from the mower so you can screw out on the coupling bar, pushing the cutter bar ahead. After I did that, the knife was out of time or register, so I had to unscrew the lead bar, but the threads were rusted and pitted and no spare so in the end I had to tighten it up, improving the lead but way off register, so then I had to break the law and shorten up the pitman stick, and after that was fixed, it made the tilt adjustment too short, so I have to bend a new rod for that. Whew, didn’t know what I was biting off there. Hope it will be worth the effort.

Tim, my grand dads mower was a deering stamped with the same part number. still have it. It also was stamped giant at the base of the seatpost. I believe it was new around the first world war. May be the same as yours. I think the gears ran in an oil bath, and you oiled the outside gears as liberal as you could, and the axle caps, too. And a shot on the knife under the holddown clips. But that’s taking my memory back along way.

[mitchmaine]

hi billy, thought i would lobbie one more time for the single guards. the double guards will be a couple hundred dollars at $16-18 each, and don’t have a ledgeplate. i had my best luck with smooth sections and ledgeplates on the guards, BUT…..thats personal preverence only. still need a pole?

[mitchmaine]

hi billy, call hall’s in windham, and ask for the part number for the guard for a no. 5 mower. it was the first tractor mounted mower jd made and a good mower and very common here instate. if he gives you the same part number as the guard you have that doesn’t fit, no good, but if he gives you a different number, it will fit your mower.

[mitchmaine]

hi george, sorry about that. i meant that the amish don’t use grassboards at all. and that when grassboards are in use, metal or not., that the grassboard flips the last foot of hay upon the hay next to it making a swarth that is heavier than the rest of the swarth and the hay dries slower in that mini- windrow. we most all use tedders now, so that probably isn’t an issue anymore.
without a grassboard, the cutterbar has only the outer shoe on the end of the bar to separate the hay, so its difficult sometimes keeping the heel of the mower in that peice of field on the next pass. so that is the reason for the stub guards. they don’t clog with mown hay. cut through it pretty well. if you ever get out that way, look at the mowers. NONE of them have a grassboard. funny, that. good luck with your mowing. even with the nags, its going to be a week or ten days before we can start thanks to the ten inches rain we have had in as many days. my neighbor has a csa, and the rain last weekend literally carried her soil and cornseed off the plowed ground and down a swale. farmin’ and famine sound alike here in maine lingo. best wishes, mitch

[mitchmaine]

the amish don’t seem to like them. the ohio amish anyway. i asked why and the answer was that the hay didn’t make as well flipped on top out at the end. it requires a few pea guards at the heel of the cutter bar to cut through when you wander out into the mown hay. i tried it one summer and it worked ok, but in the end i went and put my old swarthboard back on. it was a metal replacement that we bought a long time ago and still works well even when rusty.

[mitchmaine]

the best kind of deal is when both guys think they skun the other. offer him a hundred bucks and see what he says. you need a flywheel shaft seal, and probably a pitman and knife. male sure the drive gears are ok before you pay for it. put it in gear and move it ahead and see if it turns over easily. could be a great mower. a rebuilt ready to go mower must be worth $1200 or more now.

[mitchmaine]

seven inches of rain as of tonight with more in the next few days. what the hey? sorry about you pigs carl, mine are in a swamp too. threw in a bale of straw and they seem happy enough. little gullys cut through a corner of the oats, peas and onions look ok. can’t say when we can get back on the ground.
like you say about patterns, it makes it hard to plan your summer without some idea of whats ahead for weather.
hurricanes like irene can effect you for years, so you shouldn’t have one every summer.

[mitchmaine]

she opened up last night. five and a quarter inches so far in the guage sinse saturday around ten am. a half inch more than the month of may. the weather man thinks it will rain until tuesday, and i am worried he might be correct this time. pigs aren’t happy, but i can move them. all else seems ok except the thousand feet of potatoes i covered up friday. yuck.

[mitchmaine]

Every day is different, karl. Eighty degrees in march here, and now we have the woodstove going, 2nd of june. Probably no different than fifty years ago, except that there don’t seem to be patterns, and that’s what makes it so unpredictable. Even nooa can’t get it right for my lat. And long. “the” weathermen trying to predict weather for my backyard and they can’t do it. When I was a kid, if the weather came around northwest, you had cool dry settled weather for a week at least, and when you saw cirrus (my dad called them serious) clouds, or you could hear the train whistle up town, it meant you had two days to clean up for rain. Now, northwest wind lasts two days tops, and it swings southwest and chances of showers each day. That’s hard to predict, even if weather is your business. We have four days of scattered showers predicted with a possibility of six inches of rain (?????????????????) what does that mean? Good luck with your haymaking. mitch

[mitchmaine]

i’ve been scouting around for a parts mower for you. no luck so far. john deere wasn’t as popular as deering mowers around here, but they show up. do you belong to the farmers draft horse club? could be a parts mower there. i know a guy up in pittston who keeps a couple, but haven’t asked there yet.
like john says, push come to shove and you could try and weld or braise it. i know a couple welders who could tell you what they thought depending on the type of break. nothing to loose, correct?

[mitchmaine]

is that a no.4 mcd, or a big four jd? might have something for the mac. might be a tough spot to repair under all that draft.

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