It seems I had a page open from before 6-27-20 so I found and copied over all the missing content as good as I could
Sifan said:
Dad bought a used Super M, the tractor was born the same year as I and we spent a lot of time together. Dad custom corn shelled with our "big tractor" an international 706 LOL and from the time I was 12, I did most of the 160 acres he cash rented. When the farm was rented out from under him, we moved to town, and he took the Super M with us. Directions, yeah just look for the red tractor in the driveway LOL I was a freshman in college then. 14 years go by and I walk into a business and there is a picture of a M on the wall. I'm looking at it, while waiting my turn and a guy walks up behind me and starts out saying wish I could find a good tractor like that for my collection. Turns out he owns the business and has 10 tractors in back. Told him I know where a Super M is but I don't know if he'll turn it loose. He says, got time? We can talk about it while I show you what I have. Quick stop turned into 2 hours LOL
Ended up, he bought it from Dad with a written bill of sale that if he ever sold it, I had first right of refusal. Business man now has 30+ restored tractors and I stop and see him and "my tractor" every two or three years. Business man is still mad at me because we junked out the 2ME corn picker. Farmall only made that model for 2 years and he has never seen one at all the collector shows he attends. Unique thing about the 2ME, the front snout on the picker was mounted on the front wheels and the snout turned with the wheels. So very easy to identify. They has special hubs that extended through dust caps on the wheel and the snout snapped onto those hubs. Didn't work as good in practice as in theory, especially in less than ideal conditions because if wet ground, the mud would build up inside snout and eventually pop the snout off the hub and if you didn't stop quickly, you drove it into the ground and destroyed it.
Thought you might enjoy a little history, if I'm annoying you, let me know and I'll knock it off And if you come across a 2ME I know a guy that would part with a left nut LOL
Always good to know the tractor has a good home and the 2ME would have been a neat thing to still have around !!!
Always good to know the tractor has a good home and the 2ME would have been a neat thing to still have around !!!
Sifan said:
The conversation about the picker started with a phone call from business man, I'm taking "your" tractor to fairs and shows and everyone is asking me about the front hubs, what's with that, no one knew. Well, my Dad ran those hubs year round, figuring if he took them off, he would forget where he put them and grease isn't that expensive LOL farm logic LOL
Maybe one will show up from the ashes and it'll all be complete again
Bears Fan said:
Just checking in, the barn looks awesome! only four men 2 1/2 days it would take me 6 months
Your 245 mile trip at 35 mph made me laugh
Good to see you get away for a weekend and recharge
These guys work at a feverish pace for sure !! End of next week all the exterior steel will be on, early the following week the concrete guy is going to prep the inside for the infloor heat foam, end of the week the plumbers come to lay foam and heat pipes and the beginning of the following week the floor gets poured. I'm pretty stoked
It's not the furthest we've driven to bring something home but it was the slowest we came back home with it !!!
Er'ma'gawsh last weekend was nice. Drink a few beers, do some splashing in the wonderfully kid friendly lake and sleep in the camper. I always sleep like a hibernating grizzly bear in that thing for some reason.
jeepxj said:
nothing like leaving on a quest just waiting for something to go wrong and tripling the trip time.
I was VERY happy we made it home with almost zero bad events !!!
Farmall450 said:
Aw, rip to the Farmall M. There's always a use for one on the farm
Although I strongly agree this one needed to go. It was too big and too small and very worn out. It's been used hard it's whole life and needed way more work than it was worth to bring it back to everyday use again. Plus it was not easy on fuel so even running an auger was kind of silly with it. I'm already on the hunt for a nice fixed up Super H or a 300
XJSuperman said:
Lotta cheap 460s floating around forsale in Iowa. Depending on condition, Hs are a dime a dozen. Since you hate mowing so much, maybe you need a cub and a belly mower...
460's are such COWS though lol. A Super C and a John Deere Unstyled B would be on the list as well. Or a MM R. I'm flexible I guess
I'd love to have a little Farmall A with a belly mower. I think that'd be neat
XJSuperman said:
I thought Farmall guys liked 460s???
I hate em, they're the worst to pull against because they "cheat" with their TAs that we don't have on our 2-cylinder Deeres. Plus the guys always have their governors cranked.
Flexible is certainly one way to word it lol. Theres an unstyled B on craigslist down here. Flat spoke rears. Decent but not fully restored appearance.
I have a line on a couple cubs in Ohio that would be reasonable to get to you, but not worth the trouble probably. Ive got a super C too, but its not for sale. There is at least one on craigslist in Iowa right now though.
I foolishly passed on a VERY nice mostly restored (just needed paint yet) 1936 Huber Model C not all that long ago. It was too much money for me but was a really neat tractor !!
Grandpa had an H so I guess that's why I'd like an H or Super H. Those old 2cyl Deeres sound sooooo nice when they're under load so that's the reason for one of those. I drove the **** out of a MM R that I helped restore when I was in JR High so I guess that's why that one is on the list as well.
There are lots of all of these available it's just a matter of taking the time to look at them and find the "right" one I guess
6-28-20
The camping trip was a fantastic relief from the daily BS we all run into. I enjoy that daily BS for the most part but this was fun. We went with a very close friend of mine from high school (actually the son of the owner of Leedstone) and it was amazing to reconnect again. Our kids are the same age as theirs so everyone had someone to play with.
If there is food to cook and I'm in charge of it it's going to be cooked on the Wok
5lbs of shredded hash browns looks pretty small on there !!
My old Igloo cooler took a beating over the weekend so I put some SS hinges and screws on it ....
And a little chunk of SS chain for the new lid holder will do nicely
Once we got home it was back to work !! I started digging in the waterline from the pump house to the shop while Dad was at a grad party for a neighbors kid. Stupid MN and the need to go 7' down to keep it from freezing is going to make this a LOOOOOOONG dig !!!
How deep should we go ?? Quite a ways !!!
After a little debating I'm putting 2-4" non-perf drain tiles to house the water line, some electrical (maybe) and a fiber optic line one day. A good portion of the water line will be under concrete once the shop gets it's planned cold storage area so I wanted it to be easy to replace if needed. If the plastics run and wear though I can always put a new line in. The worst that'll happen is the pump house floods. Not a big deal as it's got a floor drain
A fellow GJ member to the South of us said he got 1.25" of rain in 20 minutes so we had to hurry and get it dug past the waterway so it wouldn't all fill in with mud if that made its way up here as well !!
We got about 2/3 of the water line dug into the shop and backfilled before it started to get dark. The rain really picked up the last 45 minutes we were working but it's been so dry here that nothing ran across the surface and it all soaked in.
6-28-20
There was "some" 8" solid tile left over from the job we did this spring and since it was paid for we left it there as the guy said he'd use it up somewhere. I called him and asked if I could have 30' or so to use to go from inside the shop to the outside to run a future outdoor boiler heat pipe through. He said come get some. I got there and he asked how much I wanted, I said 30-40' and he said "okay" and got into the skid loader. He loaded the whole damn roll up and said "you take it all or you take none of it. I'm sick of it laying around and I don't think I'll ever use any more of it !!!" All for the low price of a case of Miller High Life. I think I'll get him two cases of bottles. There is around 200' on here and it was $1.32/ft cost so that seems fair. He said it was good with him so I said thank you and drove away.
When I left Dad had started digging from the shop towards the spot we quit at last night. He was working on connecting the trenches when I got back.
Down in the trench I went with a shovel to do the finishing work.
He got it pretty nice with the excavator but I still had to move quite a bit of heavy sticky clay. Oh well, I need the exercise !!
Just like last night as we were finishing up it started to rain.
Annnnnd then it opened up and DUMPED on us !! If you look towards the center left of the picture you can see the rain blowing off the old hay shed roof. It's been a while since I worked in the blowing rain and didn't have one complaint. Sure we got drenched BUT the crops got a drink and for that we were so thankful we couldn't even start to grumble. Things were REALLY dry and we didn't get much rain last night.
red said:
Too late now cause you're already done, but was told by an old-timer that if you're not deep enough for the frost, to put 2-3 inches of peat moss on it. It will stop the freeze from reaching the pipe.
No idea if it works.
Makes sense as it'll insulate the pipes from the frost. I think these lines will be fine as I plan to blow air through them from the warm shop into the pump house to see if I can heat it that way. It may work, it probably won't but I'm going to try and see what happens
6-29-20
Santa drives an International
I thought it'd be smart to put the foam inside the hayshed
Next up is to play with a really sweet concrete core drill to drill the holes through the pump house floor.
Whilst I had it in the pump house I figured I'd drill an extra hole for the house water line for next year.
I see daylight under the floor !!!
And there they are. One for the water line and one for a couple conduits with data lines one day. Whoo hoo !!
The inside the shop pipes are "set" as well. That extra BIG one is for a outdoor wood boiler line one day
Back to current !!!
