Author: admin

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To Tractor or not, that is the question…

As we build our barn (for horses) we seem to be at a cross roads.  There are certain things like manhole cover lifter developed by Mag-Tools you need around a farm no matter what the size.  One of them is a tractor.

They sure come in handy.

For mowing, for cutting, for dragging, for lifting, for digging, for towing, for pulling, for…  Well you name it.

We have an antique tractor that came with the place.  In fact we negotiated it as part of teh deal.  It’s a 1948 Farmall Cub.  It’s a nifty 9hp tractor.  It has a belly mower.  A bush-hog sort-of.  A single blade thing.  But it’s just this side of evil.  It barely runs, or well hasn’t been run in two years now.  It has next to no power.  9hp isn’t much when you weigh almost 2000 lbs.

It has no brakes. 

We do have discs and a plow for it which we have used in the past.  Those did come in handy though with “Jr.” running as poorly as it does now I don’t think it would pull the plow.

Nope, with horses you need a loader, you need something with a 3 point hitch.  Something with down pressure so you can, oh, use a post hole digger, and has the ability to quick change attachements. Problem is, those things are expensive.  Mighty expensive, even used.

We also had a farm pickup, but someone stole that.  We didn’t replace it, and we should have but someone didn’t see the need.

So if you happen to have a 30ish hp 4wd tractor laying around with a loader that you don’t want and it needs a good home look us up 🙂

We’ll take care of it for you.

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Weekend Update

Ahh, the weekend.
Well Pooh, I guess the other guy who was borrowing the BobCat needed it longer, or maybe he broke it because it never returned 🙁   so we didn’t get any more work on the fence done.

Next week and weekend should be big.  We’ll finish out our plans for the loft and the stalls.

Today Molly competed in the Level 4 & 5 State finals.  She did rather well all things considered.  They had more flights of 9 year olds than you could imagine.  She scored her all-time high All around score, a 36.795 ?  Which aint too shabby.

She hit the podium twice, and was in a group of 9’s that were pretty dang good.  Had she been in another group she’d had placed a lot higher, 2nd or third.  As it was she took 5th over all.  Very well done.  We are proud of her.  She finally notched a 9 on the Beam.  So she’s notched 9’s on everything at least once.  She had a rocking bar, beam and vault.  Her floor routine was good too but the judges were a little off.  She still scored well.

As it sits now Molly is thinking of dropping out of the USAG and going into the recreational ranks.  CRT team I think.  They practice fewer days, do fewer and smaller meets and don’t stress as much.  Molly sure has improved and this year she’s really grown as a person.  We love what it’s done for her.  But she’s tired.  Mama Litch is retiring and she means a lot to Molly.  Molly loves gymnastics, but she likes other things too, it’s not the end all and be all in her life and I think that’s good.

She’s honest, gives it her all and she’s happy with her results.  She never looks up the podium and an frowns because she didn’t end up with better than 3rd place.  She’s never looked at a medal or ribbon and sloughed it off because it wasn’t the right color.  She’s been happy with everything she’s received.

She’s a winner no matter what.

The state meet was held in Celina, OH, across from Grand Lake St. Marys.  Which: “Was originally constructed as a feeder reservoir for the Miami-Erie Canal, Grand Lake St. Marys was for many years recognized as the largest man-made reservoir in the world.???  Read more about that here.

I thought it was the largest man made lake, or at least it was at one time.

My dad and I took this opportunity to ride to the event.  It was a beautiful day, a tad windy but still we had a good time.  Maggie rode with me for the trip.  She’s a trouper she made it both ways without a complaint.  She was born to ride.  All in all we did about 210 miles.  1/5th an Iron Butt.  Come to think of it.  I wonder what the youngest official Iron Butt pillion is. Hrms…

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It was a good morning at Doyle’s Place

The day started off kind of low-key. With all the rain last night I wasn’t sure how the day would go. I had to meet with the electricians, and it didn’t look like much work would get done on the barn today. I didn’t have the BobCat scheduled, though I should get to use it this afternoon.

The weather turned out nice, but I’m riding tomorrow to Molly’s meet. So I decided to play a little poker over at Doyles Place

GoodDoyleDay.png

Things went pretty well.

I played some 3-6 No Limit Texas Holem. Started out with $500 and parleyed that into a total of $8900 in the end. If only it were real money. 🙂 Of course getting 4 of a kind twice in a matter of two hours didn’t hurt much neither.

It was a lot of fun, and it sure is adictive.

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Barn Update 4/20

Moving right along now.

Charlie and Co. arrived right on time at 7am. It was a bit foggy but none the less, they were there to get started. It’s amazing how crooked things can get, (wood that is) and how you can coorce it into going straight. A little lean on it here, a little come-along there. We’re within an 8th of an inch square across the entire pole barn. Watching Charlie make adjustments and square stuff up like this that makes me glad I didn’t do this myself the first time.

They finished up the top board and waited for the crane to arrive. It’s a good thing too because nobody wanted to set trusses by hand. We didn’t get any more rain last night so they were pretty sure the crane guy wouldn’t have a problem getting back to the barn and he didn’t.

The crane was right on time at 8am and it didn’t take long to git-r-dun.

Barn Gallery

All I know is with trusses on it, the barn just got a whole lot smaller.