Gardening over our heads

Over this nice memorial day weekend We got quite a bit done here at the farm.  After a long spring we were finally able to plant our garden.

Here is our garden as it started this spring.  I spent a lot of time with my custom Bolens tractor preparing this site last fall.  I started with my single bottom plow ripping the topsoil and turned to rototilling it.

After that it set for the winter.  Very early spring I borrowed my fathers rototiller to get everything well mixed and to get a large pile of composted manure turned into the soil. 

Then come the seeds that we have had for months just anxiously waiting to plant.  As this is our first year with a garden together we may have gone a little overboard but I like to think that the farm stand will sell any extra produce that we have.  On that note we cant keep eggs longer than a day and where we lost a few chickens its hard to keep a constant supply of eggs. 

so between Sunday and Monday we have most of the garden in.  This picture is just the real bushy plants like cucumbers and squash and zucchini.  Now we just need to hurry up and wait for it all to come up. 

 

The other fun I had this weekend was going  to the parade.  Now I always love driving my tractors in the parade and showing them off but this year I barely made it half way and the Quadractor burnt up a belt and died on the side of the road. Luckily there were some great people nearby to help me get the tractor running and back on the trailer.  Turns out my primary drive belts were all quite bad. 

So we changed the belts and got it ready for next Saturday at the Skowhegan opening engine show. 

Grandpa finally got a turn on the Quadractor!

 

A great day for the farm

The last few days on the farm have been very productive.  We have gotten a lot accomplished in a short time and for the most part had fun doing so.  We started our weekend by building a stall in what was previously our hay room.  This new stall was brought on by the addition of a new boarder and a lack of a stall for the horse to stay in.  The stall went up exceptionally quick due to us buying a stall front off from Uncle Henry's.  The stall turned into a 12'x10' stall.  It is not 100% yet because I haven't finished the shutter for the outside as well as a few other minor things but the horse is living in it and happy. 

The other exciting news is that I finally got my Quadractor up and running.  Saturday the pulleys came in from Vermont and I couldn't bear to wait any longer.  I used the bench vise to press the bushings in, put the pulleys on and tested it out.

  I started by hauling a telephone pole and tonight tested it with logs.  We had some trees that were leaning awfully close to the box trailer so I cut them and hauled them out with the Quadractor.

  The last log I hauled was hard to winch out of the gully but once out on the flat it pulled along decently.  You can see my handy little Stihl ms170 saw in the passengers seat. That little saw is so handy for limbing and cutting the brush around where you are working.  It's light and compact which is the reason it is Allyssia's saw.  I also have a Stihl 362 which is a great saw with lots of power for the light weight.  I am a big fan of the Stihl power equipment but I wear Labonville chaps when cutting as they seem to fit best.   

Now the Quadractor still needs to have the primary drive belts replaced but for now I am going to play with it as it is.

This past weekend I also got the mower deck on my Groundskeeper but I of course forgot to take pictures.  After using it today I decided that this summer I need to rebuilt the spare deck as this one is so far gone that when I mow with it the lawn does not look good. 

More updates soon!!

The articulated bolens fleet

For quite a while now I have had a love for the Bolens articulated tractors.  Not many people know that Bolens had a line of these bend in the middle creatures but for a short lived time Bolens tried to make a market for them.

They may not have sold well in the late sixties and early seventies but I have not had trouble talking myself into buying every one that I see. 
      My first Groundskeeper as they are called came from up in Sangerville Maine.  I found it advertised on Craigslist as a mini-skidder.  From that point on it was downhill.  I bought it not running on a weeknight when my father and I had to head there after school and make a night trip out of the junk run.  This first tractor came with no attachments whatsoever and had been rigged up to an extent.  The magneto on the engine was no good so the previous owner had ran a wire from the points to a car coil pack to run the tractor.  I hardly had it working and I tore the tractor down and repainted it.  After it was painted I never really had it running much due to what I thought was fuel pump problems.  Turns out the problem was the coil pack not working properly.  I eventually bought an extra motor and swapped the magneto out and the tractor runs like a top now.

My second tractor came from Farmington Maine a few years later.  As I was coming home from a jobsite I saw what looked like a yellow groundskeeper cab in the woods.  I quickly stopped and ended up staying and talking to the gentleman that owned it for almost an hour before coming to a price.  This tractor luckily had attachments!  it was sporting the snow blower and had a mowing deck sitting in the field a short ways away.  The following Saturday My cousin Tristen and I hauled my fathers 4 wheeler up to Farmington because again this one didn't run and proceeded to load the tractor and attachments.  Now that sounds like it went well but unfortunately it did not.  There was snow on the ground and the tractor had been sitting for a few years.  We got everything loaded and within the day I had the tractor and snow blower running. 

       The last tractor and the one that brings me to this post I got in south Portland.  I had an add on craigslist looking for parts and a snowblade for it and a gentleman emailed me saying he had a complete tractor with cab snow blower and mower but the tractor wouldn't go into gear.  So again my father and I loaded up and off we went.

 The tractor is in decent shape and the mower, which is the main reason I bought it was just amazing.  This is the tractor that I have decided to sell as is to fund other projects such as the quadractor and some others that pop up here and there.  I am of course keeping the mower deck and cab but the tractor and snow blower will be a great addition to somebodys collection. 

     

Back to the Barn

Last weekend Allyssia and I got another large chunk of work done here at the farm.  We didn't start anything until Sunday so It was definitely a long day.  I started the day finally crossing the locker project off my list.  I finished putting the latches on them and they all work quite well. 

Allyssia also got a few small grease boards for each of the lockers to use them as stall cards!  They came out much better than I expected. 

The next major project was a large paddock area for my mare Annie and for another draft cross.  The paddock came out to about 60'x80'.  Again we have Gramdpa to thank for all the boards to build the fence.  We ended up having to go over to get more boards partway through the project but we finished it just in time to have it ready for the boarding horse that came in Monday morning. 

I tried to convince Allyssia that it was a good place to keep the bongo truck contained but she didn't agree.  The posts are landscaping timbers that we got at home depot and we have a stack big enough to do all around her outdoor riding arena. 

Another addition. or two....

So today, thanks to my Aunt Cheryl I acquired a few vehicles.  I got a 90's style ford F-150.  It is awful rusty but I am going to try to get it running and use it around the farm, but I haven't completely decided yet.  It has no breaks, Grandpa and I found that out when we were trying to load it. 

You can see I drove it into the ditch as we went down the hill to avoid running straight into Aunt Cheryl's pickup.  At that point I was saved by a small stump to ram up against.

We proceeded to pull it back up the hill a bit and coasted it onto the flat.  Once on the flat we backed the trailer up to the truck.  Here again I thank grandpa for buying the winch that we have on our deck over trailer.  It has saved us more times already than I can count.  We winched the truck on easily and we were on our way.

 

Unloading it was a charm! Grampa used a large stick to push the truck and we just rolled it off the trailer with a loud bang.  I don't have pictures but Allyssia and I towed it up to the house with my OBS Ford, it was quite a sight coming up the driveway. 

 

The second vehicle is a Mazda MPV mini van. 

We actually got this one to run to get it onto the trailer.  We had it running when we got the Ford but had to come back for it.  The second trip was Myself and Jake,  Allyssia's younger brother.  We had it loaded in no time and chained down. 

 Again I failed to get pictures but to get it off the trailer we had to jump start it with the bongo truck. (I will have a post on the bongo truck soon).  The van runs nicely but needs some work.  I plan on bringing it to Barry's Garage in town to have him check it over for an inspection to see what it needs before deciding what I really want to do with it.  Overall it was a good day and tomorrow's post will touch on the rest of the day and the other projects that I have worked on. 

So until next time........ 

 

The little blue chicken coop/shingle mill

As promised I have a nice post planned for our little blue chicken coop.  Our coop has led many different lives before it became a coop.  Its first life was as a small pop up camper which was disassembled and turned into a small trailer.  From there Don Chaimberlain, a good friend of my Grandfather and, I built it into a shingle edger shed.  I don't have any pictures of it as a shingle edger due to the edger being gone when I received it.  I had it full of random junk for over a year before we decided to build it into a chicken coop.

As you can see all 4 sides were open for access of the edger but that just wont do for chickens in Maine.  Two sides were boarded up completely and the other two were left for access.

It also needed a new roof to replace the rotten hand made shingles that were on the roof so it got some nice free roofing that I picked up and the ridge cap that my boss gave me after finishing his metal roof.

It then needed a paint job so after much fighting with the Paris farmers union folks we had an almost matching blue to paint it. On this side as you can see there are hinges to access the egg boxes for ease of picking the eggs. 

The coop is also well insulated with 2" foam and mill felt on the walls and ceilings. 

After the coop was finished we had to think of a way to protect our chickens.  We seem to have a high predator population here. (I think its due to their great diet and all the chickens they get to eat) So I set out building a safe chicken paddock. Using 2x6's, hog fencing, a little duct work from work and chicken wire I think we accomplished just that.

I have tried attaching the paddock directly to the coop for moving it but it is just as easy with two people to move the coop and then the paddock. 

That's all on the little blue chicken coop for now!!

Tack room lockers

Today was another day of fun at the barn as I custom fit a set of six lockers into Allyssia's tack room.  It is going up quickly and it even looks half decent but it is rough going because the back wall is one inch rough pine boards and so they are all a little bit larger or smaller than the next and they all stick out a little more or less than the last.  

Here is most of the framing for the lockers built.  On this project I decided to use planed 2x4's because I wanted as much room in the doorways as possible and it is easier to work with than wet hemlock.  The hemlock also tends to twist a bit when it dries and doesn't leave as nice of a finished edge. I did however use pine 1x6's for the floor inside the lockers that my grandpa so kindly sawed out for Allyssia.

Then we started on the lockers themselves, these first two did not turn out as great as I imagined they would but I am slowly getting the hang of this whole carpentry thing and am tending to cut things longer rather than shorter now because as they say you cant stretch a board and especially not a piece of plywood. 

Regardless of the little mistakes these two came out pretty decent.  the worst part was putting the shelves in the top and having to take it half way back apart to get the plywood in there.  I am hoping that it will be strong enough because I know that sometimes shelves like this get very overloaded.

As I got to the last locker and building the divider to go in, it was starting to get extremely easy. it's funny how that happens. I almost felt relieved that I was done but I was also thinking "Hey I'm getting good at this let me do a few more". But in reality it went well towards the end except that I ran out of plywood for the shelves.

Allyssia is supposed to get more plywood and then I will be forced into building doors for the lockers.  Speaking of doors and the tack room, my previous project was putting a half door on the tack room and if I do say so myself, I think that it came out quite well.

When more materials come in there will be more on the lockers.

 

For those wondering I still don't have pulleys for the Quadractor.  I did get a nice set of Timken pulleys but they were a slight bit larger and they were rubbing where they shouldn't. I did get the matched pairs of belts for the primary drive but before I undertake that project I want to drive it again and get my grandfather over here to try it as he is part of the reason that I bought it.  More updates soon and probably another time hop back to the building of our wheeled chicken coop!