[mitchmaine]

Us too. Penny and I want to thank everyone who put on the field days. All of you, no matter what task you had to deal with. We had a wonderful time. It was just the best.
We have only come over a couple three times, and then only for Saturday between chores, and even then don’t sit through a talk or demonstration, on the run,trying to see as much as we can before heading back home. But inspite of that, we always talk it over on the way home and even though we stick together for the day, she sees and says things I didn’t get and I do the same, and we sit there and watch the farms go by and laugh and talk and get away for the day.
We worried after our first trip that it never could be as good, but it was and still is.
How can you miss with a fairground full of people of all ages mixing up with others all interested in the same thing you are, in a beautiful place on the most beautiful day god ever created. Its gotta be great.

[mitchmaine]

brad, could you heat the shoe and turn down the heels to make calks. shorten the shoe and make heel calks at the same time. you’d have to weld a toe calk to match

see you at common ground?

[mitchmaine]

hi George,

nuts. have you tried tipping your bar down in front closer to the ground?

I think that double section has two edges closing in under the guard with a smaller bunch of grass in each making it a finer cut. in easier grass it keeps that ball of grass plugging up the hole where the knife passes through. most of the time my troble is down at the heel of the cutter bar. I have three pea guards there now and that helps a lot.
but I know what you mean about the rank bunch off wet grass down by the cut. the old guys used to talk about wire grass as the summer passed making it hard to mow, but never identified it.
are your sections smooth or serated? I’ve always used smooth thinking serated sections needed pto when you got into hard mowing, but have no way of proving that.

mitch

[mitchmaine]

hi George,
before you start grinding, there is a special section that you can get anywhere, that looks like two mini sections made in one made to go on the end of the knife that helps somewhat. but, bottom line, its late summer and mowing can get frustrating.
push come to shove, I will be interested in hearing how your grinding works.
mitch

[mitchmaine]

don’t know About you guys, but now that you bring it up, it seems that all the poles that head for the woods are round and rough. sap sled, scoot, wood cart and so on. but any tool headed for the fields (mower, cultivator, plow, forecart spreader and on) is, like carl said, chamfered, planed, sanded, polished, embellished, has to look. curious that.

[mitchmaine]

hey George,
if you aren’t to fussy about the looks, a six or eight inch straight hardwood sapling makes a pretty good pole. you don’t have to worry about sawing through the grain. natural taper. they are great. look for a fork in the tree about twelve or fourteen feet off the ground, cut it there after you fall it and that fork will hold your yoke ring, measure back ten or eleven feet for the evener strap and figure what extra youneed to fit your implement. strip the bark and smooth it out with your saw anywhere it needs and bang, instant pole.
I have a pile if polestock, some large enough to saw out a 5″cant that I later saw into poles. the side ones always peel off and twist and the only straigfht one is the one in the heart stable enough to remain true. I still saw out poles for mowers and plows, but like the tree poles (?) because they usually stay pretty straight.
you need a really straight pole for a two way plow because of constantly adjusting the pole. one side on a sweepy pole is a killer.
elm works good if you can find a straight one. I think you could tie the tree in a knot before splitting it.

[mitchmaine]

my fields look like we went around ripping the grass out by hand. very frustrating.
I was thinking today, while stuffing the hay in the loft, how hard it was to watch beautiful hay going by waiting for weather. but then it also occurred to me, that when we are all putting beautiful sweet smelling hay into the barns, and have record cuttings, so do the neighbors and that is great too, but hay has no value cause everyone is swimming in it. only in years like this when hay is scarce and not there is no pride in what you are baling that hay goes through the roof in the spring. weird, huh?

[mitchmaine]

this may be an aside, but relating to our topic a bit. I have always noticed how old horses drawn equipment had the teamster behind the apparatus. mower, rakes, cultivators, harrows etc. and I don’t think it was for visability totally. in a runaway, you could just roll off the seat and maybe be ok. then came the tractor and started pulling horse drawn tools with sawed poles, until the tools were all designed to fit the rear of the tractor. so we finished the circle by building the forecart to pull all the tractor designed tools, and somehow we got left up front of the tools in the dangerzone so to speak.
the other day, I was trimming a boarder. bombproof horse I think is the term. and he is. the most laid back creature ever born. a nice horse. penny came into the barn door with an armload of corrotts or something and boom, he went sideto in a gazillionth of a second, and the hoofstant bonked me in the knee and I trimmed a slab of meat off the heel of my hand, so i’m limping and bleeding and cussing and it all was over before I knew it started. ya just never know. be careful out there

[mitchmaine]

Thirty or forty years ago, you couldn’t get an old guy to show you how to run a saw or drive a team, you just did it, and they would all swap war stories about good horses and bad horses and runaways and so on. When I bought my first saw, the only advice I got was be careful. And that was that.
I think swapping yarns was there way of reminding each other that life happens, and no matter how prepared you try to be, or how long you been at it, or how great your team is, sooner or later, if you do it enough, something gives and away you go, and then its about how much you listened to those old tales if you heard enough to get away with the one at hand.
We have a tendancy, here on this website to pretend that if we know enough or have enough experience that runaways won’t happen, but that just isn’t so. Thanks donn, for reminding us to keep our heads down and ears and eyes open and try and anticipate the explosion before it starts.
Hope you are ok. A double gang of discs isn’t what I would like to see coming. I think about it upfront of the tedder sometimes . I have a bunch of good runaways, we can swap stories next time we see each other and good luck healing.

[mitchmaine]

I was cutting a woodlot down on the coast, pretty ledgey, and had a spot like steps and acess to one spot mweant going across a twelve foot wide ledge with a wall on one side and a drop off on the downhill side. it was only twenty feet across it to travel but on a crawler and sloped rock, every foot of forward was a few inches slip across the face of the stone until at the end you had to point uphill to finish. I hated that place. not sure how the horses would have done there, but I bet better. they didn’t like rock either.

[mitchmaine]

our fields look like patchwork quilts, trying to take the high ground. we have the weather now, but the ground is like a swamp. picking around, mowing little plots. I have shell shock too. every cloud looks black.
all the neighbors feeling the same way. I see the look on their faces. hay is going to be scarce in the spring.
last years hay I was trying to sell so desparately to make way for new, looks better than the hay i’m putting in now. what a year.

[mitchmaine]

hi donn, I actually agree with you back about the loose hay. we put it up that way when I was a kid and if you are set up, it goes pretty slick, and you can figure and repair a hay loader in no time.
I also think you are right about the wisdom of making hay, but by now i’m thinking its a condition or disease or something and just something i’m stuck with and try to deal with it.
hard enough just making hay without being a mechanic, or weatherman.
good luck there, mitch

[mitchmaine]

we had a rig similar to yours meleon. it was a stoneboat with 12′ long planks and a 4″ gap in the center running lengthwise showing the ground. it dragged along behind the baler and we stacked a dozen to 16 bales on it. when the time came we drove a bar into the ground in the slot in front of the bales and stripped the bales off into the field. it was some improvement to picking up singles, but doesn’t compare to loading wagons off the baler. which doesn’t compare to a kicker, which doesn’t compare to round baling……………who knows whats next?

[mitchmaine]

George, doesn’t your elevator have a sprocket at the top that expands into the chain with bolts? when the chain starts to wear, you pull out a link and start again.

thanks Geoff, like George, I have been to eastern Oregon out to the coast and up to b.c. but never got out your way, sounds great.

[mitchmaine]

hey George, I use a square knot too and it always seems to work.
we were taught to spit in your palm of your hand and fray the twine up about an inch from the end while rubbing it or rolling it in the spit. do that to both ends of each piece of twine, the lay them on top of each other trying to push some of the frayed twine into the frayed end of the other piece. the roll them together with your thumb in the palm of your hand till they are one piece of twine. it works and its strong, try it just for fun.

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