Still Working at it Slowly

Slowly we are making progress around the farm. With the snow melting and the days getting warmer and staying light later I am able to work on all of the things more.  I have been cleaning the indoor out so that Allyssia can start riding and teaching lessons.  She has gotten Gina out riding in the arena a couple times since. 

Gina really likes the indoor and it keeps them both out of the wind!
I hauled two full loads of scrap wood to the dump out of the indoor and kept a huge pile of wood for some of my own projects.  There was also shelving that went into my garage and lots and lots of chicken wire that I relocated.

 We still have some leveling to do with a bigger tractor but I was able to do quite a bit with just my little skid steer.  We also got a spike drag to dig up the arena footing a little bit.  The drag was from my Grampa and it works excellent.  It is smaller than my homemade drag which we will see in a later post but for the indoor it works great. 

 The warm weather is most definitely a leading factor in all the work that is getting done here at the farm.  Allyssia is out riding again and we got out fence posts home to start fencing soon. 

It looks like a huge pile of fence posts because it is a huge pile of fence posts. There are two hundred and fifty two posts in all and once the ground is thawed - all of them will be in the ground with electric fence wire on it. 







Lastly for today is a quick video of Allyssia and Gina on their first ride down Webster road together.  The road is bumpy enough that people go slow and don't bother the horses when they go by. 

In the coming weeks there are a few updates that you can expect around here! 
Number one I have already modified my wood splitter for the better and I will be doing a YouTube review on it.
Two, Allyssia and I are going on a trip this weekend chasing after some rusty gold (I wonder what it is).
Three, the start of the mudroom project, the windows came in so now I have to start working on it.  Four, Fencing when the frost is out of the ground.
Lastly my mobile chicken coop and some more tractors will be moving north to their new home.  So stay tuned and check back often to see whats going on here at the Rusty Gold Farm.

A New Friend at the Farm

So since we moved in to the farm we have had a little bit of a rat problem in the barn. We have been setting rat traps and even set a small have a heart trap to try to catch the little buggers.  I have only caught one rat as they have so much other food they don't feel like bothering my traps.  Well this past week we have been finding dismembered rats all over the hay loft and throughout the barn so I set the large have-a-heart trap to try to find out what has been eating the rats.  Finally Wednesday we caught our suspect! 

Now in this picture he doesn't look too happy, and that's because he isn't happy at all.  We weren't sure what to do with him so we called the Franklin County Animal Shelter (check them and all the great things they do out here). https://www.fcanimalshelter.org/ and they suggested bringing him in for their feral cat program.  What they do to help keep the cat population down is a  Trap- Neuter-Release program - they spay and give shots to these feral cats for free and then send them back to their barn homes.  They even let us use their carry crate to bring our new friend home in. I picked him up today and brought him home.  I placed him in the hay loft with the cage closed for the afternoon and evening and made him a cardboard box and blanket home.  This evening at night check Allyssia and I brought him some food and water outside of his cage and opened it up for him to be free. 

He is looking a little bit happier and he even let me pat him a bit without hissing.  Now that he has a home he will hopefully stay around the farm . He needed a name so Allyssia and I decided on Simon.  He is not going to be a house cat but hopefully he will become a friendly barn cat and become a common sight around here.

Finally a New Wood Splitter

So a few weeks ago I bit the bullet and ordered a Supersplit band wood splitter.  Now I am no stranger to the Supersplit brand, or the kinetic force wood splitters so this was not anything new to me.  I bought my first Supersplit wood splitter a few years back, used. The first one I bought was nothing fancy and it was far from new. 

As you can see my first one was an electric model with a 3/4 hp 120v motor on it.  The original fiberglass cover for the flywheel was all but useless so I made a new one for it out of sheet metal.  It also sits a little lower in the front so it had to be sitting up on a banking or screwed to a few 2x4's   This particular splitter has served me well over the last few years but as I do 10 cord of wood every year and a lot of that wood is quite large, it was starting to get worn out. Not to mention the fact that it is over 30 years old. 

For such a small splitter it would and still will split some pretty amazing logs.  (this picture was taken before I got my LogOx as you can see I am using just a birch hook)  In this picture you can also see the pair of vice grips that I had to use to engage the splitter.

Now on to the New splitter!!  I ordered a supersplit HD model with the gas engine, large work table and tow hitch.  I ordered it direct from the owner of the company and was even lucky enough to call and talk to the owner about my old splitter and the new one.  The splitter is made right in Massachusetts, USA. It was shipped up via Ross trucking and I had to have it delivered to Memco, Inc - the local plumbing supply company.  Tony the owner of Memco was able to load it with his fork lift but my unloading was a little more primitive. 



It does look like it was a bit dangerous unloading but I did plan it that way, having the sideboards placed like that allowed me to slow the splitter down if the need arose.  It came through with everything except for the motor installed and in just over half an hour I had the motor on and was adding the oil and fuel.  The motor is a six and a half hp Honda that starts amazingly.  As well as the motor, I really love the wide pneumatic tires as they roll over things and are much more stable than the old splitter's narrow hard rubber tires. 

Sitting next to each other there is a huge difference.  The new one has a much wider and taller stance that will be easier to work with and the large working platform will make a world of difference. 
                                             Supersplitter First Time Starting and Running
Here it is.  The first startup and first time running.  I couldn't be happier with the speed and the splitting power that this splitter has.  Allyssia is also loving the splitter already and we both think it is miles ahead of our old one.  Be sure to check out the Supersplit website.
                                                            http://www.supersplit.com/
There are a lot of links strewn through this post so make sure to check them out.  Check back often and make sure to leave a comment!

A Long Time in The Works......

As everyone has obviously noted I haven't made a blog in quite some time now.  Life has been extremely hectic the last couple of weeks.  We have made some huge leaps in our life.
We bought a house!  We didn't buy just any old house, we bought a nice log cabin nestled on 13 acres of land in Farmington.  We are right on the edge of Wilson stream and it is almost all field around the amazing indoor riding arena and 9 stall horse barn.

We closed on the property on March 5th and that day I moved a few tractors and some shop stuff into the two car garage that has now become my shop.

The Garage is not insulated but to me anything with a roof is better than having to work out in the cold wearing a snowsuit and having to shovel around all of my projects.  After moving a bunch of tractors and equipment in Monday Allyssia and I went up to the house and decided that before moving in we needed to refloor the kitchen, dining room, and the hallway to the front door.

The flooring was a vinyl roll down flooring that was cracked and faded and peeling up in spots so we opted to go with a PVC core click together flooring.  It is completely waterproof and fairly well scratch resistant. 

My father came over and helped me get started on the floor as he has done multiple click together floors at his house and at my sister's.  When I first started there were a few times that I said "why did you start this" but once I got going it got easier and better.  I still have to finish putting trim around the floor but the floor is down so that is what matters.  Another improvement before moving in was a little bit of painting.  Allyssia painted the kitchen a nice light blue to cover up the yellow that was there. 

This is the first picture collage that I have used on the blog and I hope it shows the colors well enough to see the brightness change in the room.  Finally Friday came along and we started packing the horse trailer with furniture and boxes that night and into Saturday morning.  Saturday morning one of my co-workers came and helped me get the mattress and box spring as well as the couch onto the trailer.  When we arrived in Farmington my other co-worker arrived and helped with the mattress and box spring but not the couch.  We ended up getting rid of the old couch and went to Big Lots and instantly found the perfect couch for our living room.

It's a recliner couch and of course Cricket approves!  Now even though we were mostly moved in Saturday we still had work to do Sunday moving the horses, hay, round pen panels, and other supplies up.  We spent most of the morning and into the afternoon cleaning the stalls out setting up fences and just in general cleaning the barn that hasn't been used in years.  Around two o clock Allyssia left to get the first two horses and by six thirty they were all in stalls and eating happily.

Now onto the house again!  It is a beautiful two bedroom two bathroom log cabin with an unfinished basement and a loft. 

The house is absolutely gorgeous placed in the middle of a nice flat lawn not to far from the barn or the road.  There is no wood stove but there is oil heat and a pellet stove in the living room.

The previous owners also left us enough pellets to finish the winter out.  If you notice in a lot of the pictures Cricket steals the show looking extremely cute and posing for the picture.

So it has been a big step for us but we made it and this big of a step means many more projects to come.  I am going to do my best to document the before and after of all of these projects and most definitely post more often than this last spell that went by with nothing.  As usual stay tuned as we will be making improvements and starting projects left and right here and would like to bring you along for the ride!

Just Playing Around

This past week has been very slow and I haven't done all to much. I have been puttering around the yard doing some small tasks but on the beautiful 65 degree day we had Wednesday I took the Quadractor out for another video playing in the snow.  This time I used the clamp for my GoPro and clamped it to the front fender of the Quadractor and went for a joyride.  I won't go to far into detail and I will let you see for yourself.
                                                      Quadractor In the Deep snow!
Come spring time I have some light logging to do with the Quadractor at my bosses house.  I really enjoy the Quadractor and have a lot of fun just driving it around like this but would really like to work it a little bit with some actual logs.  In other news today I picked up an amp meter for the Caterpillar .  Tomorrow I plan on installing it and moving the light that I had installed to a better vantage point.

On that note I am going to sign off for the night but stay tuned because I always have new updates no matter how small.  Stay tuned and check back often. 

On This Day

After much hassle with the bank and exceptional patience from the buyers we closed on the homestead in Peru today.  It is sad to think that I no longer own property at the very end of a dead end road.  I have been ready for this for a few months now, even though when I listed the homestead for sale I was very leery about selling it.  The new owners are extremely nice people and I know that they will take just as good care of it as I have but it is still sad to have it gone.  While moving my equipment out of the barn I did save a few small things that are part of the homestead to bring with me on my next adventure.  A few of them would be considered worthless to most like the door and window from my little shed but the most important thing is my handrail. 

This handrail, I was told, was carved by one of the builder's helpers when the barn was built.  This for me was one of the selling points of the property when I bought it.  Someday I want to smooth the handrail itself up and put it in my house. 

 I know that you've all seen these two before but they really capture the essence of the property and just how beautiful it really is. 

Well I will stop ranting and sign off for now but stay tuned and check back often. 
Someday soon we will have another homestead that Allyssia and I can show off to everyone. 

Final Big Push for the Caterpillar

This weekend I was on call at work and despite working most of the day Saturday and part of Sunday I had time to finish getting the Caterpillar motor mounts shaved down and even had time to get the motor installed and running.  No need to jump ahead of myself so I will start with the beginning.  This morning after going on an early morning no heat call in Turner I stopped in at Grampa's house with the four aluminum motor mounts two of which needed to be cut down a grand total of 85 thousandths of an inch each.  

This is the start of the process all set up in the milling machine.  We got the mount level side to side within 1 thousandths of an inch. 

Once it was ready we had to set the milling machine to take the whole eighty-five thousandths of an inch all at once.  When milling down aluminum you can take a lot more at once and at a much faster speed than when milling down steel.  We were able to mill down both of the motor mounts down in around an hours time. 



This was the first of the mounts being planed down and there is really nothing overly exciting about watching it get done.  I enjoy working with the milling machine and the lathe as it is very precision work but the end result is very satisfying.  After finishing with the mounts and cleaning the milling machine up Grampa and I fixed a rolling pin as well but alas I did not snap any pictures of that process.  After lunch I ran another service call and headed home with my finished mounts and freshly tuned up motor for the Caterpillar. After contemplating the rain a bit I headed out the door to work on the Caterpillar.

 Before you know it the mounts were back under the motor with brand new bolts and washers.  This is one project where my Milwaukee auto ratchet came in extremely handy.

 This time around before running the engine I checked  multiple times to make sure that the coupling was square and level.  I was able to rig the Lovejoy with a two inch wide steel band clamp on the seam of the two couplings to hold it together properly while bolting the engine down.  Doing that I believe kept everything from shifting and moving. 
                                                            The Caterpillar end result
Even though I do forget to take pictures while I am working on the equipment because I am so excited to get it running I didn't forget to take a video to share with all of you.  Now that the engine is running right thanks to Adams Small Engine in Livermore Maine, and the coupling is not self destructing on itself, the machine goes great.  Allyssia was able to play on it a little bit in the rain and enjoyed it!

 The best part for me is not having to carry the firewood in by the handful and I think that it will cut down on my shoveling drastically.  It has been a very expensive, time consuming , and frustrating shovel/wood hauler but I think it will be worth it in the long run.   Remember to check back often I am always doing something here at the farm.  Until next time stay tuned!!