Torsgad December 29, 2022 Gårdstraktor

 

Another year of snowblowing

    Marion lives one mile south of us across a field, however, to get there I have to drive a half mile down our road, then turn south at the schoolhouse for one mile, then turn back east a half mile, and turn south down her road and across a rickety bridge over the creek to her yard about a half mile away. My tractor doesn’t have a cab or windshield on it, so I have to bundle up against the elements.

    I used to have what was called 'a heat-houser,’ but that was several years ago. It worked fine, but they’re much more expensive to replace now; another couple layers of clothes are comparatively less expensive.https://www.tractorpartsasap.com/tractor-heater-cab-universal-large-side-entry-122976.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIuOX2sfeF_AIVLf_jBx2XwgaxEAQYASABEgIQ6fD_BwE

    I do this because Marion and Jerry took me under wing in 1983, immediately after my truck accident when I rolled my 1972 Land Cruiser on the county road, at corner of their place, and was thrown from the vehicle, narrowly escaping with not only my life, but nary a scratch, dent, nor bruise, nor broken bone, nor trauma to my chassis, but did destroy the vehicle. 

    Noticing an old red 1959 GMC pickup sitting in my yard on blocks, Jerry asked me if the engine ran and the transmission worked. Upon getting the affirmative, he said that he’d help me get it on the road if I helped him insulate his machine shop, and so began a friendship that lasted 39 years and continues on; I owe them.

    Marion is tough, being of Norwegian ancestry, as was Jerry. She and her family have visited the Motherland about a dozen times since 2000 when Jerry had his sailboat in Europe. She survived dangerously high seas near the Shetland Islands, among other ocean going adventures. In addition, as a prize winning House of Lloyd sales person, she won two or three trips all over the world that she went on with her friends, leaving Jerry happily at home.

    When Jerry died in July of 2019, even though he doubted she could live on the farm by herself with all of the maintenance it requires, she’s done pretty good for herself being of stubborn nature, and Norwegian. She accepts the assistance of her adult children, brothers, sisters, friends and her neighbors; me being but one.

    Her next-door neighbor also rents her farmland. Since Jerry died, the neighbor uses one of his big tractors to snowplow her road extending from the east/west  county road then south a quarter mile to her bridge. His tractor is too big/too heavy to cross it, so that’s where I come in, with my ‘pony-sized’ tractor, as the neighbor’s grandpa, Layton, used to describe my Massey-Ferguson 180 diesel tractor. https://www.farms.com/news/farm-equipment/the-massey-ferguson-180-shines-with-the-perkins-diesel-engine-124274.aspx

    Even though it’s tiny by today’s standards, it's handy in its own right. My 1967-era tractor is what used to be called a loader tractor. I’ve never had a front end loader on it, although it appears the previous owner did as there are loader attachments on the frame of the tractor. Farmhand loaders were a popular make of front end loaders for it and other tractors of its size, but I didn’t ever buy one thinking I didn’t have much use for it.

Farmhand loader for tractor

    Over the years, it would’ve come in handy in situations, (like getting unstuck ...) but it was just one more thing to break, and knowing me I would’ve done a bang-up job doing it. Jerry could have fixed it, sure; but it still would’ve been an expense I didn’t want to bear at the stage of my life. Maybe I could find a used one cheap now, I don’t know, but what’s the point?

    Even so, I’ve always hated crossing Marion's bridge on my tractor. Until last year, ‘Mark’ plowed an alternate road for me through one of Marion’s fields that circumvented the bridge. After a local salvage yard truck, hauling two of Marion’s junked cars, unbelievably crossed that bridge, I decided I could do it with my tractor weighing less than half its weight — even after noticing some years earlier that ice had broken the homemade concrete pillar from around the steel leg of the bridge at one corner. It still looked strong; (What the other supports look like I don't know).

    Jerry used 15-foot creosoted bridge planks 4-inches thick for the bed of the bridge then later used 12-foot lengths of green-treated 2x10s perpendicular to them as a sort of tread or runway, about as wide as a farm truck. My tractor wheelbase just fits on it. When the tread is hidden with snow-cover, sometimes the wheels slip off them and onto the planks, and the snowblower swings side-to-side a little, giving me the heebie-geebies.  

Tractor tracks

    Once across I resume my cool-guy demeanor and set about clearing her driveway area of about 60-yards by 60-yards, blowing snow deep into the woods that surround her yard and her two-car garage, enlarging the swath as I go up and back dozens of times, in reverse, always in reverse.

    There’s a company named Erskine that makes a pull-behind snowblower for tractors. I’ve always thought it a silly idea, driving into the snow you want to remove, but Erskine, a manufacturer in northern Minnesota has been building attachments for farm tractors for forty-eight years or so I think; has proved that snowblower has appealed to a good many of their customers. Their website is the best: https://erskineattachments.com/products/3-point-pto-rear-pull-snowblower/

    It’s just as silly to back into the snow you’re removing if you can’t easily rotate the chute where the snow comes out, as in my case as of late. When I can't readily move it the opposite direction, the wind can blow the snow back at me. Maybe I should reconsider getting another heat houser ... 

When driving a 2-wheel drive tractor in deep snow, keeping the momentum up is as important as it is in mud.

    It has an adjustable width front end and rear end wheel base. Being only two-wheel drive its rear drive wheels are partially filled with a sugar beet solution for additional weight (about 750 pounds each) to aid in pulling the little stuff like 4-bottom plows, 10-foot field disks, and 3-pt blades, The sugar beet solution doesn’t freeze in the wintertime and is less corrosive than the calcium chloride solution that cost me a new set of rear rims several years ago. I used to use chains on the rear wheels, in snow, which really gave it pulling power, but it was always such a pain to put the chains on that I think I traded them to Jerry for some welding/fabrication work he did for me.

An oldie but a goodie. Very good on fuel. Still cheaper to fix than buy a new one.