Happy Trails Farm: February 2009

We made another trip to the farm on Tuesday Feb. 24th; we needed to take the golf cart back as they had gotten the batteries replaced. When we went up to get the cart they had another cart setting outside that was for sale. It was a used cart that did not have a roof on it and the back seat had been removed and replaced with a metal bed that you can use as a dump bed. Lois has been saying that we needed another vehicle at the farm so you guessed it; we are now the proud owners of another golf cart. I will have pictures of it posted sometime soon. So we had to pull the trailer back with us so we can take the new cart back next week sometime. Since we were there we did do a little work, we had to rearrange the barn so we will be able to get another vehicle in it. Lois wanted to start working on the trash pile down by the barn pond. I will post pictures of this, before and after picks. There will be several trips to the salvage yard as there is some metal in it. Lois also planted some tulip bulbs around the trees on the dam of the pond. I got to do a little fishing, caught one bass that weighted about a pound and hooked another fish that felt like a nice one but lost him without seeing what it was. Hope to post again sometime next week when we go to the farm again.

Well we finally made it over to the farm Tuesday and Wednesday, the 17th and 18th.
Tuesday was windy and the temp was in the low forties, with the wind it seemed awlfully cold. We got to the farm and immediately hooked up the trailer to the Trailblazer, we had the trailer loaded down with junk that we had picked up from around the barn area. Old fencing, concrete reinforcement wire, several sheets of that, a bunch of electric fence wire, old posts and a watering tank made out of an old boiler. 540 lbs worth of metal, we hauled it over to the salvage company and got around $40.00 for it.

On the way home we stopped and looked at an Allis Chalmers 2 row planter that we will be needing sometime down the road. It was in very good shape and one of the best ones I have seen. I have been looking for one of these and they don't come cheap. So Wednesday morning we were on our way over to pick it up. When we got there the gentlemen who was going to load it on the trailer was talking to another man who had pulled in. He told us that the man had stopped in and had wanted to buy the planter. He also said that 3 other people had stopped in to look at it the same day we did. He told us that he was selling it for a friend who takes old planters that are 4, 6, 8 and larger row planters and cuts them down to 2 row planters. This gentlemen sold 6 of them for him last year and this was the second one this year. So there must be good money in it.

We had another tree fall down along the west fence line, I have a lot of work to do cutting up trees on the property. I know of at least 6 trees that need to be cut up that have fallen down in the last year. Most of them are elm trees which I will use to put in some of the eroded ditches to help the dirt in place. There are 2 of them that are cedar trees that I am going to use for posts for a shelter that I want to build on the property down by one of the ponds. I think these cedar trees will work great for this and last a long time.

I did get on the tractor get some work done, two of the trees we had cut down the first year, the trunks and some of the bigger logs were still by the barn so I drug them over to one of the eroded ditches by the drive way coming into the farm and dumped them into it. I also was able to bust up the stump with loader on the front of the tractor.

We also had to get a list of all the model and serial numbers off all the equipment we have at the farm for insurance purposes. I had been trying to get insurance on the barn and its contents since we bought the farm but everyone was so expensive. Get ready for a little advertising here!! Thanks to Farm Bureau Insurance we now have very affordable farm insurance. A special thanks to the agents in Dresden for helping out with this. We also took pictures of everything in the barn since some of the stuff didn't have model or serial #s.

We then loaded up Camo Kirby (our golf cart) grandkids named it that and have brought it back to Gallatin so we could have it looked at as it seems to have lost a lot of power. If it is something wrong with the batteries this could be expensive. Thank goodness this is something that will be a tax write off, I think. As you can see I did a lot of pulling of the trailer, thank goodness for that, one of the best investments I have made.

I did get to do a little fishing on Wednesday, it was a beautiful day and I did catch one crappie. When I told Lois it was time to go as I didn't want to drive after dark with the trailer, she wasn't very happy. She said she hadn't gotten very much porch swing time. It is one of those things that now it seems we don't get to fish or swing as much as we would like to. It is still nice to go over and be there as we know every day there takes so much stress off of us. We did see three deer run across the property before we left.

We also got to meet one of the neighbors that lives just down the road from us. He was riding by on his polares 4 wheel cart and seen the gate open and the blazer so he pulled in and we must have talked for about an hour. A very nice gentlemen. The ponds both look so good filled up. They were so low last year from the drought.

Here are some pictures from the trip. Enjoy until the next time.

The two row planters