Thursday, November 10, 2011

Progress on the farm

I've got to give a hand to Dan and Sean.  With their help, Andrea and I have made real progress towards getting rid of the clutter around the farm.  Let's take a look at some before-and-after pictures. 

March 2011

Ugh.  Lets see.  Two trailers (big white one to rear, small white one on right rear) silo, and random stuff in no particular order. 
November 2011; silo moved, and trailers parked.  An untidy pile of buckets on the right, small trailer disposed of (My brother Bryan had me store it for him, but I finally got him to get rid of it).  The trailers provide work areas for stuff we do.  We use them like big work tables.  the double decker stock trailer in the rear of this picture doubles as a dog kennel -- it's 8' wide x 30' long, and so it's got more room than most dog kennels, and it's easy to clean. 
A major cleanup project was the front pasture.  My property was  junkyard about 50 years ago, and there's still quite a bit of metal in the ground.  Every year something else surfaces, so I decided that I'd get serious about cleaning up the front paddock.

 These big springs must have been really popular in the 40s.  this is about the 15th one I pulled out that day. 
Differentials haven't changed much.  Maybe this one is to a model T.  Don't really know, off to recycling it went. 


After plowing, raking, tilling, raking and then rolling, it's flat, level and pretty darn clean.
The final step was to plant it, and I'm gratified to see the new grass coming up. 
 It should be beautiful pasture next summer. 

1 comment:

lytha said...

i pull stuff out of the ground regularly at our property. it seems that it was acceptable in the past to use your back 40 as a landfill and then dump dirt over the top. i found 75 rusty wheels, countless rusty nails, barbed wire, animal bones (boar), ceramics, countless shale siding tiles, antique jars/bottles, and a 1920 deutsches reich coin. one day i expect to find a bomb which i hope will not need disarming. (bombs continue to turn up all over germany.) it disgusts me, that this method of disposal was common and now i'll spend the next X years pulling things out of the ground before they injure my horse. there is no local dump/recycling center. instead, metal collectors drive every week blaring ice cream truck music. sometimes we pay them but mostly they are happy to get what they can. the cities have a much easier system. since car ownership is not big, people do not take stuff to the dump. once per month there is a junk day and everyone piles their old crap on the sidewalk.