My parents have what would be described best as a ‘hobby’ farm, before my early teens it was a little over 40 acres, 4-5 acres of it was tilled and we did everything with a Ford 9n (everything that was not done with the horse team (Belgians) that is, which was a lot when he was younger). They are tough machines, we added fluid to the rear tires which the added weight helps a lot as it was our only plow(rear blade) my entire childhood.(but like Grouse said, chains went on usually around deer season and stayed on till we started getting ready to plow in spring(gravel road/driveway)) Grouse hit a lot of the highlights limitation wise, I can’t speak to anything hydraulic as to this day he still has zero equipment that uses any hydraulics. We ran a 2 bottom plow on it, it could and did run our baler(small squares) but that was pushing its limit. A basic mechanical inclination, repair manual, tools and space the average joe can work on these.
When he bought the first expansion to the farm (which doubled the size, most of it pasture) we bought a john deere model A which became the workhorse for the next decade plus.(probably not an ideal foodplot machine but still my favorite tractor to operate, plus it sounds cool as hell) His workhorse now is a massey ferguson 135, built very similar, quarter of a century newer, a bit bigger and live PTO (and power steering). I doubt you will find one under 2k though, if you do it probably needs a lot of work. But there again they (like most tractors of that age) were built with the idea in mind that the farmer would need to fix it in the field himself (dad spent last winter rebuilding his in his garage).

Same set up as deertracker in my .50 accura. I’ve experience very minimal meat damage, 3 have dropped where I shot them and 3 no more than 30 yards. 1 made it all of 75 yards, the ironic part of it is that he went uphill most of that 75 yards with a bullet hole right through his heart. Shots were all between 10 yards and about 80 yards.

Rifle/slug shooting grouse. If he wants to start wing shooting I need to find someone WAY better than me to learn from (it wouldn’t take much).

Here I thought I was probably one of the only people who still did this. I use 4 (240#), in a line between the wheelwheels. Whether it needs that much or not, it’s just how many I have (bought as weights to hold down some large pieces of wood I was gluing together). Last truck had a fiberglass topper that seemed to be enough weight by itself. The difference with/without is very noticeable, can’t think of a way to describe it but it’s a different ‘help’ than switching 4wd too.

I’ll be shooting my mathews dxt until it blows up or I cannot draw it anymore (my shoulder is telling me this will be the last 70# bow I shoot though).
(Backstory to below, I gree up with my dad shooting a bear recurve with the old fiberglass arrows from the 60’s that weighed a ton by modern standards, bit I recall ever deer he shot those things just blew through the deer even with that ‘slow’ recurve)
In my quest to create a sledgehammer of an arrow this year I tested out adding various insert weights to see how they flew and hit the target (cx piledrivers). I settled on 100 grains added, increased my FOC to around 14% if I recall correctly. Flys well and thumps the target a lot better according to my ear, just shy of 600 grain total weight (now within 50 grains of those old fiberglass arrows of my dads). I initially only tried 100 to see if I could see what ‘too much’ looked like but turns out they were the best test arrows I shot(did 20, 50, 70 and 100). I do not shoot distance in the woods, longest shot maybe 30 yards (relatively thick woods and I don’t hunt fields), most set ups are 20 yards or under for primary kill zones so the added ‘arc’ of the heavier arrow of little concern for me. I don’t have a chronograph but speed change at 20 yards visually seemed minimal, my point if impact didn’t move at 20, 30 yard it dropped a little more but not a lot(don’t remember exactly).

My buddy swears by grim reaper heads so I’m going to take a chance on a mechanical this year too, at least until they give me a reason to think otherwise. If I go back to fixed blades though I will go back to a replaceable type blade as I’ve not been able to ever get the Montec broadheads as sharp as I’d really like them to be, so may as well go with replaceable type that come out the box sharper to begin with.

My primary deterrent is that I bear a descent resemblance to this character and process what most would say is an even more badger like disposition.

Kidding aside (sort of), I don’t live anywhere that I’d be genuinely concerned about home invasion being a high possibility and if I did I would be moving. I still have precautions in place though but that is for me to know and whatever unfortunate soul who dared try to find out.

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Best sweet corn was growing in my garden. Friday was the 3rd storm to knock it down, not sure it’s going to stand back up this time

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Haven’t gotten cameras ready yet but am over at my parents doing some work around the farm as my dad is on restricted duty for a month or so. Was done with jobs for the day so decided to go do some field watching like I did before cameras. Just sit a row or two back in am adjacent corn field and watch. Was watching some small bucks in the field (alfalfa) and out strutted a pretty nice buck, all the other small ones parted way and gave him the middle of the field with a wide berth. He looked to be pretty much formed on main beams with just the tips still growing. Not huge but nice, I’d guess he will be mid 130’s when done. Didn’t have my phone with me, pretty far away to try and take a picture anyway. Coulee country of WI east of La Crosse.

John Rasmussen wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Sharon wrote:</div>
Part of the trouble that makes today’s kids seem worse is that with technology and social media we hear about everything, and we hear about it much quicker too.

While I totally agree with this, I just don’t think when we were kids we would have shot fireworks at people. I was not a great kid my any means, but would have never done it. One problem is when I was a kid, I was afraid to be arrested and what would happen when I got home or got picked up. These kids have no fear of this.

Exactly same first thought that came to mind. My fear of the old man’s belt was a far greater driver in behavioral modification than the legal consequences. Now neither of those are present.

I had forgotten about the interesting positions pups like to sleep in. We’ve had a little bit of land shark going on but not bad at all, seems to consistently get a case of the zoomies about 730 in the evening, usually kicked off by seeing his own reflection in the glass of the patio door. Only had 4 ‘accidents’ in the house so far and half of them were the first day so that is going quite well.

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Good point there, I wasn’t sure how they handled cranking (haven’t dug too deep yet as its a ways back on the priority list).

I think we wore him out today. He woke up just a bit ago so I took him outside to see if he needed to go, just looked at me and walked back to the door so he could sprawl out on the floor again.

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I happened to be taking some tools out to my shop when I read this so I measured my truck out of curiosity. 2018 silverado extended cab with 6.5′ bed, without the hitch in the receiver it was 19’6″, 20′ on the head with my 2″ drop hitch in. So at 20′ minus the OH door you would have to park perfect and have your hitch out to ‘maybe’ get the door to shut.
Our last house (bump out in middle of garage, truck on one side boat on the other), my wife parked in the ‘middle’ and didnt want to have to have the OH door open in order to open the back hatch to unload groceries and such in winter so I mounted one of those longer soft foam dock bumpers on the wall, once she nosed the vehicle up till it touched then she knew it was in enough. I think your situation though may be too tight to even allow for the bumper.

I’d go airsoft, I’ve got a weak co2 bb gun I bought to start teaching my son with, I tried once to deal with some problem rabbits using it and watched them bounce off the rabbits head and he didn’t even stop eating.

It was too quiet in the house after losing our old boy Boone last summer so last weekend we met this guy. Owner is going to hold him until after our opener trip so he will come home just before memorial day (and we will need to have come to agreement on a name by then)

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Hydro wrote:

I didn’t need to adjust the post or anything else on my Karavan trailer.

Thata encouraging (I have a karavan also, albeit a 2001 model)

For those who have it, how much give or take does it set the boat back on trailer from the original post location? One has been on my wish list for a while, my post is already as forward as it can go so may have to move the rear roller set back a setting to keep rear roller under the transom (hopefully not so much it messes with weight balance on tongue).

I get enough (verizon) to call/text on the west side of the lake, east side is iffy to not at all.

I’ve not had issues looking up my weather app (on west side) but have wifi at resort so don’t often need to use phone reception for data usage stuff (don’t use my phone much when up there other than a camera).

*I missed it being namakan, I was thinking Kab*

Pretty sure I read somewhere that rhubarb is poisonous to rabbits and they know it and will leave it alone. Don’t know if true but they have touched mine yet.

I saw the heads of 14 shoots of asparagus coming up before it dumped snow on us Sunday. Snow should be gone enough when I get home to see if they are all still there.

3 weeks seems a long ways out. I was t-boned 2+ years ago, dude just pulled out of a parking lot right into me (never looked my way), just body damage to me, totaled his (to be fair his vehicle was one backfire away from dying anyway), I took it to my preffered shop that afternoon and had a quote to give to insurance next day. This was fall of 2021 so took 3 months for parts to come in though. Other guy was insured (bare minimum required) so my insurance company went after them but I didn’t get my deductible back till last fall (just short of a year after it happened). Not sure how normal that is as never dealt with this before, first claim in 22 years.

If you look at the ‘aqua’ version of yesterday’s modis image you can see them on there

Your going to get some extra flow out of rainy lake as they put out direction last Friday to target the bottom third of the rule curve for the end of March. I would think that would help. Outflow today is about 3000 cfs more than last friday, roughly 35% increase.

My day (morning) to remember so far came on our first Kab trip. The was a particular boulder/point I’d had my eye on all all week and finally on the last day the weather calmed enough for us Kab ‘novices’ to try it. The plan was to start there amd then our way through a nearby bay the rest of the morning. We never left that boulder all morning. It was mostly huge smallmouth bass but we caught some walleye amd pike too, just consistent the whole morning. I’ve checked that area everytime we go and have never repeated it since (decade).

There was a day on Rainy with Mr. Koonce that is a close second too, we had to have caught 100 eyes that day.

Have an 1990 something (94 maybe, was my dads so ive been running this thing since i was about 12) lawn tractor that has a mounted snowblower. After returning home from vacation week before last I was cleaning up the driveway from the last big dumping and threw the belt. Upon resetting it I found that the tensioning idler pulley was shot, a little surprising since I replaced it not that long ago. Broke it down and couldn’t find anything else wrong so got a new pulley and set it a little tighter in the tensioning window to see if that helps (guessing it slapping is aiding in wearing out the sidewalls). While I was at it I inspected the brake assembly since I knew the chains had caught it a time or two when they got loose. Yup, cracked the assembly housing, bent one of the bolts and was barely hanging on so today a new brake assembly is arriving. The joy of running 30 year old equipment, but beats the heck out of the price of a new equivalent machine.

If you have horses you do not want them around, their feces can carry EPM. They don’t ‘play’ possum for long when they start showing up around the barn at my parents.

https://extension.umn.edu/horse-health/equine-protozoal-myeloencephalitis-epm#:~:text=EPM%20is%20a%20neurologic%20disease,a%20few%20signs%20of%20illness.

I don’t mind winter, God knows my body isnt built for the heat of summer, but seems fitting this is my view this week (FYI, first time in 9 years I have agreed to step onto an airplane)

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My in laws have built on into every house they’ve owned and use it all the time. We’ve used theirs a few times, i like them enough I have plans to remodel a basement room into one, but not priority enough that it’s gotten off the ‘things to do’ list yet the last 2 years.

Somewhere I read a half hour in a sauna burns a couple hundred calories.

I just finished the last project of our 2022 garden, shelled 96 ears of popcorn into just shy of 2 gallons of kernels. Couldn’t believe how well it grew, nearly every plant had at least 2 ears, several had 4. Pretty sure I’ll be safe switching to sweet corn this summer and won’t run out of popcorn. Taste tested it twice just to make sure it tasted good.

Transplanted some rhubarb last spring so should be able to get some this coming spring, haven’t had rhubarb pie in years.

Hoping to add a Northstar cherry to the orchard this year and need to add a better pollinating partner for our honeycrisp too (hoping for sweet 16 but will see what local nursery has come spring). Originally had thought the crabapples in yard would work but they are all a little too early (but perfect for the zestar).

I’ve got a 2001 1600 pro sport so only a couple years newer. Really like it, built like a tank. There are days I wish it had more storage but that just keeps me from buying too much stuff.

Keep an eye on transom, when I redid mine last year it was obvious (after transom was out) water was getting in through the splashwell scuppers (that were not sealed at all originally other than being crimped) that caused the rot. I had just noticed some bubbling near the scuppers, checked under the transom cap and seemed good but as i was checking things out from the bilge side i found out the bottom of transom was exposed so poked around and the screwdriver drove right up into it off to the sides (center area where OB is mounted was still solid).

For colder weather I really like arctic shield myself. Still using my first set of bibs (since 2008) just replaced my parka 2 years ago. Original parka still warm but it was worn enough it was starting to make noise.