Portage River Farm
Notes on our struggles and successes on our family farm in rural Michigan.
(Pinckney, Michigan)
26 Apr Sun 2009
First Day On The Tractor
I'm finally home and the rain that was predicted for the weekend managed to finish up on Saturday night. Sunday morning, the sun rose in a windy sky while I stood in our dining room hoping that it would dry the grass and ground out quickly. I had been anticipating this day for the entire week in Mexico and had built up way too many expectations for myself of all of the things I would accomplish.
Speaking of grass, I'll digress for a moment to mention that it has begun to grow with vigor. I believe it is foretelling problems to come as its rate of growth will outstrip my ability to find time to push our little lawn mower all over this huge yard. We haven't managed to find the time nor the cash to purchase a riding mower and I fear that it may turn into a green version of my snow-shoveling torments of last winter before we do.
Today turned out to be beautiful, if a bit windy. As the sun did its work on the damp ground, we celebrated our daughter Freya's victory at yesterday's Michigan History Day competition by having a big breakfast with pancakes and bacon. We even cracked open our first bottle of homemade maple syrup! Freya's winning of the state competition means that she will now go on to compete in the National competition to be held in Washington, D.C. in June and her project will be put on display in the Smithsonian. We are very proud of her!
I decided that my first priority would be the prepping of the garden soil for planting. As you may have seen from the picture on the website, the garden area is overgrown with weeds and small trees. As well, the previous owner of our farm had dumped piles of bricks, dirt and trash in one area that would have to be cleaned and leveled before plowing could begin.
The first job that I wanted to perform was the removal of the trees. I reasoned that it would be better to pull them out of the ground instead of simply cutting them off with a chainsaw and leaving the stumps and roots in place. The tree removal seemed a good first task for the tractor so I searched on the Internet for the best way to do it. Right away I found all sorts of accounts of people killing themselves doing the very task I had in mind!
It seems that it is very dangerous to attach something very heavy or stationary to the back of a tractor. If the load is sufficiently large and the traction under the back tires is good enough, the tractor can rear up and flip over backwards in less than a second. The articles claimed that this can occur far too quickly for the operator to drop the power, disengage the clutch or jump clear of the tons of iron rearing back to crush them. The websites drove home the point with scary photos of inverted tractors atop dead farmers.
After reading all of the safety precautions, I learned that it was safest to hitch the load to the swinging drawbar. It is positioned well below the axle to minimize the risk of rollover. With an appropriate level of caution and a sturdy chain, I was able to complete the job in a couple of hours. Two of the trees proved to be too large. They have a date with my chainsaw as soon as I get it back from the repair shop. I suppose we'll have to work around the stumps fo
r several years until they soften enough for me to dare dragging the plow over them.
Once the trees were out of the way, I attacked the dirt piles with the front-end loader. I had imagined that I would simply scoop them up and dump the dirt somewhere else. That proved to be difficult for this novice driver so I simply tipped the bucket vertical and dragged the piles down flat. After we removed the last of the trash and hauled a bucket-load of bricks away, it began to look much more likely that we would be able to grow our vegetables there.
As the shadows of late afternoon slid across the field, I backed the tractor up to the brush hog. Locking the brakes, I jumped down and wrestled with the three-point hitch and attached the mower shaft to the power takeoff. This was my first attempt to hitch anything to the tractor and I hopped on and off of the tractor again and again before I had it lined up just right.
Once I was convinced that I had hooked it all up correctly, I raised the mower, put the tractor in gear and started for the field. After driving only a few yards my attention was drawn to my spectators as Janet and Aidan tried to alert me to the fact that the brush-hog had dropped back down and was dragging two deep furrows across the lawn! I raised it back up again and finally made it into the field to begin cutting the brush.
I would love to report that it went smoothly and that I knew just what I was doing. Nothing would be further from the truth. Luckily my audience became bored of watching me struggle to get the mower at the correct height and left me to continue the fight unobserved. The tractor seems to be bogged down as if the mower were dug into the ground and preventing forward progress. A couple of times I found myself digging a hole with one of the back tires and I wondered how the brush hog could change the way that the tractor drove so much that I could no longer produce enough power to move over the slightest bump!
I jumped off of the tractor twice and scratched my head at the puzzle. There was absolutely nothing that should be impeding forward motion, yet there I was digging a big hole on one side as if I were attached to an anchor. Finally, I noticed the cause of the whole struggle. I had failed to disengage the brakes! I had been practically dragging the left rear wheel the entire time! What a dope!
I disengaged the brake as I shook my head and chuckled. As if a great weight had been lifted, the tractor sprang forward and began mowing with ease. Shortly thereafter I learned to stop fiddling with the height of the mower as the tractor's hydraulics miraculously began adjusting the height to match the terrain. In my defence, I should mention that the operator's manual that I ordered has not arrived yet! After those revelations, the job became a snap to complete. I parked the tractor and headed in to tuck Aidan into bed but not before I had coaxed everyone to the window to see that I had finally managed to figure out what I was doing as evidenced by a nicely mown field.
Speaking of grass, I'll digress for a moment to mention that it has begun to grow with vigor. I believe it is foretelling problems to come as its rate of growth will outstrip my ability to find time to push our little lawn mower all over this huge yard. We haven't managed to find the time nor the cash to purchase a riding mower and I fear that it may turn into a green version of my snow-shoveling torments of last winter before we do.
Today turned out to be beautiful, if a bit windy. As the sun did its work on the damp ground, we celebrated our daughter Freya's victory at yesterday's Michigan History Day competition by having a big breakfast with pancakes and bacon. We even cracked open our first bottle of homemade maple syrup! Freya's winning of the state competition means that she will now go on to compete in the National competition to be held in Washington, D.C. in June and her project will be put on display in the Smithsonian. We are very proud of her!
I decided that my first priority would be the prepping of the garden soil for planting. As you may have seen from the picture on the website, the garden area is overgrown with weeds and small trees. As well, the previous owner of our farm had dumped piles of bricks, dirt and trash in one area that would have to be cleaned and leveled before plowing could begin.
The first job that I wanted to perform was the removal of the trees. I reasoned that it would be better to pull them out of the ground instead of simply cutting them off with a chainsaw and leaving the stumps and roots in place. The tree removal seemed a good first task for the tractor so I searched on the Internet for the best way to do it. Right away I found all sorts of accounts of people killing themselves doing the very task I had in mind!
It seems that it is very dangerous to attach something very heavy or stationary to the back of a tractor. If the load is sufficiently large and the traction under the back tires is good enough, the tractor can rear up and flip over backwards in less than a second. The articles claimed that this can occur far too quickly for the operator to drop the power, disengage the clutch or jump clear of the tons of iron rearing back to crush them. The websites drove home the point with scary photos of inverted tractors atop dead farmers.
After reading all of the safety precautions, I learned that it was safest to hitch the load to the swinging drawbar. It is positioned well below the axle to minimize the risk of rollover. With an appropriate level of caution and a sturdy chain, I was able to complete the job in a couple of hours. Two of the trees proved to be too large. They have a date with my chainsaw as soon as I get it back from the repair shop. I suppose we'll have to work around the stumps fo
r several years until they soften enough for me to dare dragging the plow over them.
Once the trees were out of the way, I attacked the dirt piles with the front-end loader. I had imagined that I would simply scoop them up and dump the dirt somewhere else. That proved to be difficult for this novice driver so I simply tipped the bucket vertical and dragged the piles down flat. After we removed the last of the trash and hauled a bucket-load of bricks away, it began to look much more likely that we would be able to grow our vegetables there.
As the shadows of late afternoon slid across the field, I backed the tractor up to the brush hog. Locking the brakes, I jumped down and wrestled with the three-point hitch and attached the mower shaft to the power takeoff. This was my first attempt to hitch anything to the tractor and I hopped on and off of the tractor again and again before I had it lined up just right.
Once I was convinced that I had hooked it all up correctly, I raised the mower, put the tractor in gear and started for the field. After driving only a few yards my attention was drawn to my spectators as Janet and Aidan tried to alert me to the fact that the brush-hog had dropped back down and was dragging two deep furrows across the lawn! I raised it back up again and finally made it into the field to begin cutting the brush.
I would love to report that it went smoothly and that I knew just what I was doing. Nothing would be further from the truth. Luckily my audience became bored of watching me struggle to get the mower at the correct height and left me to continue the fight unobserved. The tractor seems to be bogged down as if the mower were dug into the ground and preventing forward progress. A couple of times I found myself digging a hole with one of the back tires and I wondered how the brush hog could change the way that the tractor drove so much that I could no longer produce enough power to move over the slightest bump!
I jumped off of the tractor twice and scratched my head at the puzzle. There was absolutely nothing that should be impeding forward motion, yet there I was digging a big hole on one side as if I were attached to an anchor. Finally, I noticed the cause of the whole struggle. I had failed to disengage the brakes! I had been practically dragging the left rear wheel the entire time! What a dope!
I disengaged the brake as I shook my head and chuckled. As if a great weight had been lifted, the tractor sprang forward and began mowing with ease. Shortly thereafter I learned to stop fiddling with the height of the mower as the tractor's hydraulics miraculously began adjusting the height to match the terrain. In my defence, I should mention that the operator's manual that I ordered has not arrived yet! After those revelations, the job became a snap to complete. I parked the tractor and headed in to tuck Aidan into bed but not before I had coaxed everyone to the window to see that I had finally managed to figure out what I was doing as evidenced by a nicely mown field.
John_3
12:00 AM EDT
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