The Manure Fork

The best thing we bought this year is the manure fork. It attaches to the front bucket of the tractor and does an incredible job raking and scooping up manure and bedding. My least favorite job in the barn is raking up soiled bedding, especially if is packed down for a while.
The fork in action, lining up for a scoop:

then picking up nearly half of the bedding in an 8x8 stall.

And taking it away.

And onto the manure pile.

We cleaned out a 16x16 area in about two hours; a job that would have taken three people all day if done by hand. A well spent $260 dollars!

A Tractor Parade?

We were sitting inside and saw a tractor pulling a hay wagon full of people.

Following were four other tractors with flags.

My pictures are pretty poor since they were moving away from us by the time I got my camera and got outside. We don't know of anything special going on in the area, but Alan loves to see tractors driving by the house. It reminds him of his childhood.

And Down Came the Tower

In our little valley there is very little reception for the radio, tv, and cell phone. There is no cable out here either. The prior owners of our house had a satellite dish but we just don't watch that much television. I wish we had better radio reception and you have to go outside to use your cell phone. Years ago, before satellite dishes and the internet, the prior owners put up an antenna tower in the side/front yard. We don't need/want/use it and it was in the way of the excavation for the garage end wall and expanded parking area. So down it came.

The tower was attached to a concrete pad by three bolts. Two of the bolts were hinged.

By unbolting the third bolt the tower could, theoretically, fold on the remaining two hinges. But we didn't want the tower to fall. So in came the winch (coming off the red Defender in the picture above.)

The Defender held the tower up, while Alan on his tractor pulled the tower out of the tree limb it was stuck in.

The tower unbolts into three sections. In total it is 28 feet tall. Anyone want to buy a tower? After all that work we had a nice roast turkey dinner with friends.

Tractor Work

Today the tractor got a good work out.

 It dug holes for my fruit trees...

Scraped out an old stump...

And pulled out a yew bush the deer killed. It even took out a couple of lilac bushes that were in the way. (All the years at the old house I longed for a large lilac bush. Now, at the new house, I have so many I am pulling them out!)

The lambs thought the holes were useful. If they stood in a hole they didn't have to lean over to eat grass!