It Might As Well Be Spring

Yes, its the name of  an old tune but the past few days have me believing that spring has arrived. Throw off the parka, toque and winter mitts. For part of the day anyway. Lately the lazy farmer is making me look lazy. Although I made up for it yesterday. The cleaning plant was ready to do my wheat so I had to really hustle with the old Loadstar to keep up with the cleaner. It does 280 bushels per hour and I can only haul , well, less than that. It is a ten mile drive to the plant and hard to get much speed out of the old IH truck when it loaded with heavy wheat. I kept it down to 300 bushels per trip. Time lost moving grain augers, shoveling up the last few bushels out of the bin, moving five miles to another location for the last load. It all adds up to a lot more time than I can believe. At the end of the day with close to 900 bushels of clean wheat in the bin, over 150 miles on the truck, screenings hauled to another bin, engine oil drained from the truck (it was overdue for a change) and a headache, I was glad the day was done. One more small step in getting ready for the busy season.

Loading the Loadstar in the Hundred Acre Woods

At least the weather co-operated with beautiful sunshine and above normal temperatures. Making the snow really disappear. More forecast for tonight though as the descending temperatures turn the slow rain to snow. This too shall pass.
On the Massey tractor continuing saga, no big news. Small steps forward combined with setbacks mean the tractor still sits in the shed where I parked it last October. The engine head is on and running but the fuel tank installation did not go well. A previous owner had damaged the threads on the tank outlet and I made it even worse. I don't know if teflon tape and JB weld are going to be enough to fix this one. Agco parts tell me that a new one is not available anywhere at any price.
Stay tuned, I have not given up on this one yet.