Vacation: Rough Start

We worked and worked and stayed up late on Thursday so we could get out of here Friday morning. We planned to leave by “10 or 11” and pulled out of the driveway at 11:05. Typical! We left separately, me with the horse trailer and a ewe we were going to drop off at the breeder’s and Brian with the pickup we were dropping off to be worked on while we were gone. I went to the bank, he made a few stops, and we met up at his uncle’s (he is our mechanic). I parked on the road and got out to check the ewe. I opened the side door on the trailer and was surprised that the ewe didn’t startle and jump up. It took me a few seconds to realize why. She must have put her front feet up on the manger (4ft tall) and got her left front foot stuck in a big gap where the manger had rusted out. To make it worse, she tried to get down and ended up in an almost sitting position, essentially hanging from her foot with it way above her head and her toe pointing at the ground, thus

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Brian’s Project: A Tractor Post

“So… since you’re always looking for interesting pictures for your blog, you should come outside and bring your camera” says my husband when I arrived home last night. “Is everything alright!?” I said, a little worried. I went out to see what he was talking about. Turns out his project for the day involved tearing apart our main tractor, a JD 4010. We put a lot of money in to this tractor last year and had joked that it was not allowed to break down ever again. The only thing left to break was the hydraulic pump and it really needed to be replaced awhile ago. It died out in the hay field the other day so Brian hauled it home. He had to take off the entire front axle to get the pump out. The pump itself costs $1200 so any money we can save on labor is great. I’m so glad Brian can do stuff like this! Here is the tractor where it sits until the pump is replaced. That red thing in the picture is The Bone Creeper. Brian asked for the creeper as a Christmas present last year and he uses it a lot. Here is

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