A Cold Rain in a Warm Cabin

It’s a cold rain that’s falling this Sunday evening and I was fortunate enough to start/finish getting hay out for the cattle.  What should have been routine. . . wasn’t.  It started off bad last week when I went to configure the tractor for hauling hay by removing the brush hog and loading bucket then installing the hay spear. 

I’m growing old (68) so I use the magic of my mind to overcome the dwindling brawn of my body.  I position the 15’ brush hog with the ‘wings up’ in the barn by placing the hand crank on the tongue and then using the hydraulic to lower the body until the pinion that attaches the tongue to the frame of the tractor is free from binding, pull pin, remove hydraulics, place 6×6 block of wood between the driveshaft and the frame and then pull on the drive shaft retaining ring (releasing it once it sets) and then removing the drive shaft from the tractor PTO. 

Now, I’ve mounted and removed that brush hog probably 50 times and once, only once, have I ever removed the drive shaft by pulling on the near side of the universal joint that exists between the Tractor PTO and the drive shaft.  That once was last week.  I guarantee you that I will never, never do that again.  The mass of metal that consists of half of the huge universal joint and about 10 inches of solid steel shaft the runs from the joint to the PTO crashed into the fingers I had inserted in the joint to ease in pulling off the assembly. 

After flopping around the barn for a good 10 minutes until my teeth and hair quit hurting, I climbed into the cab and I’ll be damned if the damned SCR/DEF system hadn’t triggered a damned fault and the damned tractor had friggin ‘de-rated’.  Again.  Damn it.  For those fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with a ‘de-rated’ engine, it means that it will not run above idle.  No way to fix it without the dealer software.  And, because the tractor dealership is friendly and helpful beyond measure, it also means that the friggin tractor will go un-repaired for 3 to 5 weeks.  Well shit, it’s getting cold and the cattle need hay.

My most helpful neighbor (Lynn) up and died on me last month so I called on another nearby farmer and he said he would move a few bales from the hay barn to the hay rings (a few hundred yards) as soon as he could.  Friday passed, Saturday passed and then Saturday evening I get a note from him.  Tractor-trailer went tango uniform in Decatur on Friday.  On Friday evening they changed Sunday’s forecast to rain so Saturday was consumed finishing off the fall harvest: he, his father and uncle and son were all engaged on some serious farm implements finishing off 3000 acres of row crop.  Sunday’s are ‘come to Jesus’ days for everyone up this-a-way but me (cause they ain’t got no Church of Thomas Whispered), so I know that Monday would be the soonest that the cows could be fed. 

So SIL calls the ‘neighbor’ to my immediate east.  He’s not really a neighbor in that he’s got a hunting lodge on 500 acres of forest and deer plots.  He comes up on weekends to hunt so he won’t be using his tractor again until spring when he replants the deer plots.  Not to make a long story any longer, we’ve got a running tractor for as long as we need it.  The cows are fed. It’s Sunday evening and I’m snacking on some wonderful homemade fermented pickles in a warm cabin wondering how long until my fingernail falls off.

All is right in my world.