Good Morning!!!! 53F @ 4:45AM. Sunny. High 84F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph.
Low humidity and winds have given cause to CalFire to issue a No Burn Day warning for the next few days, though WU can't find more than a 10MPH breeze in its forecasts. The grass is long enough to mow, but that's off the table as well until things cool off and the humidity rebounds.
Sorry the Studebaker didn't work out, Randy. Not surprising someone would want a small fortune for something as rare, even if it was somewhat the worse for wear.
A brand new Bosch dishwasher did the same thing a few years ago to a coworker's recently remodeled kitchen, Drew. The water took out the particle board underlayment in the kitchen, which of all things had wood flooring on top, then ran into the living room and destroyed most of that, too. The cabinets were particle board, too, so they had to be replaced as well. It was all insured, but she was without a kitchen for months.
I had just started in with the electric Makita chainsaw yesterday morning when I heard gas chainsaws running not far away, more than two. So I took the buggy up the driveway and found a mess of trucks and equipment in the cul-de-sac, including some Hipster woman blocking in my driveway. She was after something the neighbor's "farm" was selling, and seemed upset when I suggested that she park in their driveway instead of mine, as I needed to get by her. Anyway, the real news is that the crew that is clearing trees along the road leading to the house had started work, and to say they were well equipped would be an understatement. The star of the show was a track hoe with an articulated logging attachment, a combination grapple and shear that when I first saw it had a hold of a 40' piece of pine tree no less than a couple feet in diameter. It was quickly and effortlessly reduced to 10' sections that were limbed by a pair of guys carrying Stihls with three foot bars, then carried off by a track steer with a grapple on it. Up the road a short distance, another track steer was building a pile of slash, and not far away was a tracked
chipper that they were feeding 18" diameter oaks and pines into. That thing sure made a noise! The head honcho was running the big 'hoe, and I asked him if I could take the oaks they were cutting. He was OK with that, so I put the grapple back on the tractor and returned with it, making many trips back down the hill loaded. Maybe a couple cords worth of 12"-18" diameter trunks. Easiest firewood I've collected in a long time, and there will likely be more as they're not done yet.
That took up most of the day, but I did manage to finish up the rest of the manzanita I had collected, but it only amounted to half a pallet worth. I'd like to clear more ground today, but with the burn ban in place, I don't want to be "that guy" should a spark start a fire.
The tractor could use grease and a bath, and I need to research a little problem that cropped up as well. The hydrostatic transmission has a mode called Auto Throttle, which lets you operate it pretty much like a car. Push the go pedal down and it moves, push harder and it goes faster. As I tried to pick up the first trunk yesterday, the tractor wouldn't move, and the RPMs wouldn't rise above idle. Then it would race and jolt off for a few feet before they'd drop back down to idle again. Turning it off and restarting fixed the problem for a few minutes, then it would come back. Turning the Auto Throttle off fixed it too, so I suspect the computer in the darn thing was seeing something it wasn't happy about and going into some kind of limp mode. Didn't seem to be temperature dependent, and it eventually stopped doing it, but I'd feel better if I understood the why of it.
I still have some details to pull together for the water tank permit as well, so I might as well finish that up today, too. Yesterday I downloaded a new app that can plot elevation vs. position on a map, and used it to find out that there's only a 50' drop between where the tank will go and the hydrant location. I was hoping for a hundred feet, but 20 PSI of water pressure with no pumping is still worth the effort of digging a trench. And with the crew not working today, it would be a good time to pick through their piles to see if I can find some more oak.
Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their weekend!
put game cams out,watch some nascar but most of all putter.
