Storm damage

It’s one of those metaphysical questions of the angels dancing on the head of a pin variety. Did my recent purchase of a deluxe 17 horsepower DK chipper in some way precipitate the arrival and resultant destruction a few weeks ago of three intense storms?

I ponder this useless intellectual speculation as I operate three chainsaws (but not at the same time) in conjunction with the above-referenced chipper. The question, like that of the sound of the tree falling in the forest, is just a way to amuse myself while tackling the vast amount of work I haven’t made time for amidst my other mountains of farm work still needing to be done. Its role in bringing on the storms aside, the chipper is useful in clearing the driveway of fallen limbs and reducing them to a hefty pile of woodchips. As for why I need three chainsaws? Only someone who has never used a chainsaw and is therefore unfamiliar with its temperamental ways would have to ask.

As I drive the pickup back up the gravel driveway after one of my several chipping, cutting, mulching, sweating excursions, I glance over to the front of the barn, where through the foot-high pigweed I spy an ancient manure spreader buried in the overgrowth. Someday, someday soon, I think.

I’ve been thinking this same thought for a few months now, that I’ll be needing the manure spreader when I do the annual barn cleaning. The plan is to hitch the piece of equipment to the big Kubota, employ the bucket on the smaller Kubota to clean out the barn and dump the manure and bedding into the spreader, and then use the larger tractor pulling the spreader to scatter the load across the fields as a fertilizer.

Straightforward in conception if not execution. When I pulled out the spreader from where it is kept parked in the sawmill yard, one of the two massive tires shredded into dry-rotted clumps of rubber. Considering that these were original tires on a piece of equipment as old as I am, well, let’s just say I’m not surprised. I backed the spreader under an overhang attached to the barn, got the jack, and removed the tire. A couple of weeks later and $450 poorer, we brought home a new tire on the old rim, which I then mounted onto the manure spreader … and left it right where it was and returned to tackling all those other things to do on the farm.

There it sat all summer until late July, when on one rare sunny afternoon sandwiched between endless days of gloom, wind, and rain, I backed the truck up to the spreader, hooked it up, and pulled it to the side of the barn to service. That is when I noticed the other tire was flat. Ten minutes later, with the air compressor (the one that needs a nut to hold the axle bolt in place—another item on the list of things I never seem to get around to repairing), I filled the tire … which just as quickly wheezed all the air out through the rotted inner tube around the valve stem.

I won’t burden you with all the details of the next stage, but suffice to say it took another two weeks to complete and involved the following:

1. Getting on the schedule of the tire department at the farmers co-op, in the middle of one of the service’s chronic “we all quit” cycles, not once but twice.
2. Having the tire rim returned because it was too rusted to support a tube.
3. Sanding and scraping the rim back into shape so it would hold the tube without puncturing it.
4. Searching for and ordering a new replacement tire, at a savings of $100 over the co-op’s price.
5. Bringing the tire and the rim back to the co-op, and shelling out another $50 to have the tire mounted.
6. Bringing the new tire and tube on the old rim back to the farm.
7. Putting the tire back on the manure spreader.
8. Moving the spreader to the front of the barn, ready for action.

Which is where it sits. Because last week we were blessed with a string of beautiful cool and dry days, so I took advantage and spent each day catching up on the mowing and weed-eating around the farm. Now, thanks to all of that work, I can see clearly the spreader and also my new, hefty pile of wood chips. But alas, it is now hay cutting season. Perhaps I’ll be cleaning the barn in October?

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Reading this week: On The Border With Crook (J. Bourke). The Seven Ranges: ground zero for the staging of America (W. Hoyt)