Good morning!!!!

   / Good morning!!!! #64,161  
I hear that Justin Verlander took my advice and married Ms. Upton yesterday. :)

I got a big case of "couch potato" yesterday, recuperating from the bush hog blade changeover....
 
   / Good morning!!!! #64,162  
67°F and .47 inches rain last 24 hours. Raining as I type.

Sunday football :)

a keeper for sure - Blessed I am.

Extra prayers for you Randy

Be safe
Have a great day
 
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   / Good morning!!!! #64,163  
Good Morning! 50F @ 9:30AM. 20% / 0 in. Sunshine and clouds mixed. Slight chance of a rain shower. High 54F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph.

Hopefully, Randy, at your wife's service you were surrounded by friends and family, and they'll lend you a shoulder to lean on. When my mother died, I met some of her friends for the first time, and it was a comfort to learn more about her from them. A few stayed in contact after the funeral, long after most had forgotten her. With luck you'll meet a few of those, too.

potatoBug.jpg
I've been hearing the telltale scratching sound of a potato bug in the office the past few days, and this morning it was clear enough I found it. This time, instead of squishing it, I corralled it long enough to don a pair of gloves to pick it up and launch it off the front porch, where hopefully it makes a proper home. Seems like I always get one in the spring and another in the fall when the weather changes, but they're so big I wonder what else could get in the same way. Not a comforting thought.

wheelOld.jpg spokesOld.jpg
Got a start on the respoking job on the old motorcycle yesterday. Pulled the tires and tubes off both, but moving a bunch of stuff monkey-move-up style around to get to the tire mounting machine took longer than pulling the tires. Then slowly let the tension off all the spokes of the first wheel until I could work the nipples and spokes by hand, pulling one completely apart to see what was involved. The first thing I found was that they'd sent me the correct length of spoke, but they wouldn't fit the bushings at the hub side, and the nipples wouldn't go through the holes in the rim. I shouldn't have been surprised, as there were signs in the bearing stack that these were wheels made before BMW had gone to a thicker spoke correct for the model year stamped on the head badge, and which had been sent by the vendor. Set up a little fixture on the mill to drill out the bushings, and set up a wireless drill to do the rim holes. That worked well enough until, after pulling about ten more spokes, I discovered that the square shoulders on the bushings were tailored to the recesses in the hub, and not all were interchangeable. Managed to figure out what went where and got the ten new spokes back in place, but abandoned plans to completely disassemble the wheel for better access and a bit more polishing. Between the bushings and also noticing that each of the rim holes was drilled in a direction to point to the matching hole in the hub, it didn't seem very likely I'd be able to reestablish the correct orientation once I brought the parts back together. Both wheels are the same, and I'd have the other one to use as a pattern, but there was so much to get wrong I think going forward replacing one spoke at a time is the best approach. Hopefully I'll get the rest of them done today. Not exactly the relaxing Sunday I usually plan, but should be pretty satisfying if I can pull it off.

This last storm left an inch of rain behind, not near the two and a half predicted, but enough so that the county lifted the total burn ban. If it warms up enough I'll scrounge around the wood pile and see if there's enough dry stuff to put together a campfire tonight, which thanks to the expiration of Daylight Savings Time, will come comfortably close to dinner time from here on out.

Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their Sunday...
 
   / Good morning!!!! #64,164  
Meant to post this Fri. Some of you guys are sitting on a gold mine.
IMG_8856.JPG
 
   / Good morning!!!! #64,165  
after struggling with the hitch adjusters to get them free, I then spent a very enjoyable four hours cultivating my neighbor's collards in two different fields.
He came out, smiled, and promptly told me I had missed a row. Which I had...
though he was more concerned that he had a half gallon of cheap booze he couldn't drink without his chasers, whatever they are, of course last Thursday he had told me he had sold some produce and promptly bought four half gallons. He has one left. Half gallon a day. Is that possible? Can you imagine how pickled he is? And he was complaining he didn't feel good.

Collards are a big deal here for the holidays. Very traditional vegetable for traditional Southern meals.
If he can get his collards to market, which remains to be seen, he could make some good money over the holidays.
I'll try to help him.

Little Massey did great, really did need 4wd as the tines were digging in pretty well. Just purred along at 2100 rpm in cruise control in low range.
As you can see these rows weren't exactly set down by gps, so I had to pay attention to where the row went.
 

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   / Good morning!!!! #64,166  
geez horrible to come in and see the news in Texas, pastor's 14 year old daughter killed among so many others.
Do folks have to carry guns to church now to protect themselves? Sad, very sad.
 
   / Good morning!!!! #64,168  
Collards are a big deal here for the holidays. Very traditional vegetable for traditional Southern meals.
If he can get his collards to market, which remains to be seen, he could make some good money over the holidays.

Holy mackerel, Drew, that's a LOT of collard greens! Who's gonna weed and pick them?

Half gallon of cheap hooch, A DAY? Well, I guess if you started first thing in the morning, and kept hitting it until you went to bed, you might finish one off. I'd be more likely to pass out after the first three rounds, but I'm obviously NOT world class like your neighbor.

I imagine that after all that booze, the shape of those rows came naturally!:laughing:
 
   / Good morning!!!! #64,170  
That is not far from some of our Texas friends. Prayers sent. Ed

I was thinking that Ed, whether we had any members or their family in this area.
A little country church.

I have been a life long pacifist. I did mention, however, in our Meeting a few years how do we peaceful folk handle someone with a gun coming in and opening up.
It was a topic none wanted to explore. How can anybody say it won't happen here anymore.

I suppose I could sell everything and go back to living on a boat and head to the Exumas. I could run a tractor with a rake on the beach, keep things tidy in paradise.
Nice small house built to withstand a Cat 7 hurricane. Better protect the tractor too.

There are sure a lot of mentally ill folk on the loose and we are going to have to be creative in protecting ourselves.

RNG that is just one field, there's another one almost as big. My neighbor is now in a race for the holidays, with rain coming, which is good, and if frost holds off, he can have a valuable marketable crop for Christmas. The question is how cold is it going to be until then. He might make it, it's quite the gamble this late in the year. Most crops are being harvested locally and winter wheat planted. Seeing green crops in the field in December is dicey even for here.
Yeah, I have absolutely no idea how he plans on harvesting it all. I think by hand with Mexican farm labor he thinks he can call in.
I'm going to look up collard harvester for kicks.
Unlikely I'll be adding a collard combine to my fleet.
 

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