Loose Ends

For those of you who like to wrap up loose ends here's some good news, here at Missed Skeet Farm, we have been busy making sure there will plenty of loose ends to go around. We have been creating them in a flurry of activity trying to get as much done as we can this fall before winter brings things to a screeching halt.
We need to:
tighten up the goat barn (these goats are descendants of South African goats and don't like drafts or rain wah, wah, wah....)
get more firewood under cover
harvest a few more roosters who are making trouble. (Turns out there is no consensual sex in the chicken world and we have some roosters who just don't deal well with rejection and hens that are so busy running they couldn't possibly lay eggs.)
Get the gravel pad and stone wall built for the new goat barn (this will help settle and compact the earth before we start building next spring)
Clean up down at the sawmill and get ready for milling. (I am hoping for small storms and a mild winter to allow me to mill wood)

Of the projects, doing the earthwork is always the most challenging. It requires a very large dose of luck and some skill to get both the excavator and the dump truck running on the same day. Last week we were ready to move gravel and both started and ran beautifully. Unfortunately the tires were too bald to make it up the slight incline. Since new truck tires cost more than the truck and still might not give us enough traction to get up out of the pit, I opted for tire chains. This required a one week wait while we located some chains and got used to the idea of paying for them.

Soooo, we put the chains on the dump truck, fired her up and headed out to the pit. Halfway there, heading downhill, she stopped and refused to start. I jumped it- nothing. I took the gas line off to the carburetor and had Kris hit the starter. Gas squirted out so it was an ignition problem. There are three likely suspects on an old Dodge truck. One is five bucks and goes a lot. When it stops the engine just quits and won't start. Option two is the earliest evolution of an electronic brain. It costs $29. The third, is the ignition switch, which is worn badly and I have to play with to get to make contact. I took out all three options and headed to Napa. They had option one and two, but no ignition switch for a 1974 Dodge dump truck and none available on their website. I was surprised. I sure this was a big item for them. Well, I went home and tore apart the ignition switch thinking I might be able to clean up some contact points or spot something I could fix. When I opened it up, there were no glaring problems that popped out at me. There were however two (or maybe more) little tiny copper springs and small metal clip that did. Kris was out doing chores and it seemed imperative that I get the ignition back together before she returned and asked me what I was thinking when I took it apart. Women don't have the same urge to take things apart and it is best shield them from it, especially if your in the reassembly stage and some of the none essential small parts are probably still on the floor somewhere.

I finally got the ignition back together sort of and I was out the door just as Kris was coming in. "How's it going?" she asked as I went by. "Won't know for a minute," and I headed out for reassembly. All three parts are easy to get in and out so in less than an hour, I was ready to try starting it. I sat behind the wheel and turned the key to the on position. Gauges started moving. Huh. Well, I tuned the key a little further and the starter kicked in. This was going better than most of my mechanic adventures. The starter ground a bit and I remembered to pull the choke out. Amazingly, the truck started. All right! Super mechanic actually fixed something.

It was too late to move gravel that day so the next day I was anxious to see if I had made a real fix or the truck had just decided to run for a moment. We did chores and cleaned up a bit around the barn, ate lunch and headed out to see if we could move gravel. It was cool and the excavator likes it warm. After a long bit of grinding, the excavator sputtered and caught. I jumped in the dump truck and it started. Hummm. Kris loaded it up, I put in first gear and it crawled up out of the pit without spinning a tire. We got out seven loads before we shut down for the day to do chores. We need to have several more of these days when everything works.
Were headed into a warm sunny spell and if we are lucky and nothing breaks or stops, we may actually get our gravel moved. I am cautiously optimistic.