Another Busy Weekend...
My cold seems to have mostly run its course; I'm still a little congested and stuffy, but overall the worst symptoms are gone. The weather this weekend was very helpful: It was mostly sunny and reasonably warm, with a decent breeze blowing to help dry things out. I got a good amount of outdoor work done, the most important being the cutting down of more of the overly-tall grass behind the house. One of the main motivators for getting this done was the power-line to the deep-well pump; The line has never been buried properly, as that requires the use of a ditch-witch, and renting (or hiring) one just hasn't been in the budget. So in the meantime, we had originally strung the cable up on step-in electric-fence posts, with the idea being that this way we could see the cable so we wouldn't run over it with a mower, and being visible would also be a reminder to get the job done. Easier said than done though...
The constantly wet weather has made it impossible to keep the grass properly trimmed, so it often reaches two or three feet in height before things dry off enough to get in there to cut it down again. It also grows so fast that this can happen in less than a month; I just wish that the hay out in the field would grow so well. :/ Sometime last week, it occurred to me that instead of having the cable strung along the posts, a better idea would be to lay it on the ground, and cover it with something like sheets of plywood. This would protect the cable, and also keep the grass from growing in the area where we eventually want to dig the trench to bury it. Sheets of plywood aren't exactly cheap though, so I was pondering a better solution. That answer came to me a couple of days ago: Take some of the old, rotten swather canvas in the old buildings, and lay it down over the cable! The canvas is roughly 3' wide, which is plenty, and it will definitely protect the cable while also preventing the grass from growing up again.
Another big project was getting an older garden-tractor working again; I had purchased the tractor from Jack when we first moved out here, with the idea being to repair it and use it to haul the utility trailer and other things around. The repair needed wasn't overly difficult: The previous owner must have dropped something very heavy on the air-cleaner, shattering the cast-iron intake manifold on the twin-cylinder engine. I had to replace the manifold and air-cleaner, which although it wasn't a complicated task, was a low-priority one, so that's why it took roughly two years to get around to doing it. I finally got that done this afternoon, and the big question was "Will it work?" It should; I had already tested to make sure that both cylinders had spark, so if the fuel-supply was working, the engine should run. It took a little convincing with some starting-fluid, and a boost to the battery, but after a couple of false-starts the engine sputtered to life, then purred along happily until the test-tank ran out of fuel. Once I knew it would work, I drained about a gallon of old stale fuel from the main tank, and purged the fuel-line. I installed a new fuel-filter, filled the tank with fresh fuel, and hooked it all up.
Moving it outside the shop, I restarted the engine, and put in gear, and.... Nothing... It wouldn't move. Drat!! I checked underneath to make sure all the belts were in place, and they were. I had the kidling sit in the seat and push in the clutch/brake pedal to make sure everything was engaging properly, and it was. So we tried again, and this time it worked! My theory is that after sitting for so long, so clutch/brake pedal simply hadn't moved far enough to engage properly when we tried it the first time. Several push-and-release cycles got everything moving properly again, and now we have another working garden-tractor! This one also has the benefit in that it has a more powerful engine (18hp instead of 14) and more importantly, it doesn't burn oil! It's just a shame that I don't have a mower-deck for this machine, but that was never the intent in the first place, so that's fine.
We finished the evening with a nice supper of roast-beef with garden-fresh vegetables (from a neighbour's garden, since ours never got planted this year) and a new episode of Myth-Busters. Not a bad wrap-up to the week, and certainly a lot more accomplished in the last two days than the rest of the week prior.
As a final note, I noticed that the horses are starting to grow their winter coats. This is a definite sign that things are cooling down, and Winter is coming. The interesting thing is that in the last few years, they started growing these coats in August, and this year it didn't start until September. This leads me to think that Winter will either come later this year, or it will be a lot more mild than previous years. Here's hoping! :)