powerrabbit

The grass had crept out over the path, in fact in some places it was 4" thick turf. I was working to the edge of the concrete which is not particularly straight, my Father laid it more than 40 years ago and it was done rather 'agriculturally' , nothing to edge it but yesterday I put a string line down and took out the most obvious curves, on my hands and knees with an old breadknife crawling backwards cutting to the edge of the concrete. I don't like regimental straight lines unless it's the veg in the garden. One other path in the garden, the one at right angles to the left of this one is old concrete silage side panels laid down, they make a good path.

Straightening up the garden path!

Had to go and buy a new all-in-one printer copier scanner today, previous one developed a fault yesterday and doing some online searching for causes and remedies to fix it seems like it's not a 'consumer' repairable fault, bought new in late 2009 it's well out of manufacturer and extended warrantee, the big store where I bought it offered to have a look at it but would probably not have the warewithall to fix it so then contacting the manufactures nearest service and repair centre, Hounslow in Middlesex, which is a long way from here, the very helpful woman said that with the cost of sending it over to them and the cost of the repair would probably be more than what I could buy a new more up to date model, which I've done. The package now includes a set of ink cartridges, these apparently contain within the ink the proper lubricant to prevent the print head and nozzles from blocking up, okay for the first time but with the genuine cartridges being nearly the price of the printer the second lot will have to be compatibles. The stores extra 3 year warrantee was a good deal, just an extra five quid for a no quibble new replacement if anything goes wrong with it.

Yesterday was a cracking day here, nice and warm sunshine, blackbird sat at the top of a tree singing his head off so taking advantage of this nice day I planted my spuds in the garden and tilled a row of peas, going to be another such day today but it was quite white with frost first thing.

Nice study Bill. Interesting that a lot of farms in that period were using the old British Rail baggage four-wheel wagons for trailers.

Today I been mostly trying to keep out of the very hot sun but I had to pick the raspberry's and the loganberry's before the blackbirds had them then I had to keep an appointment with my garage mechanic to fit a new brake vacuum pump on the Land Rover Defender, brake pedal went very hard so you needed a lot of leg force to operate the brakes, only an hour to do but awkward. This evening had to take my 11 year old Niece to her local school village hall for her school play she was in, second performance of the day 'The Tempest'. Took the camcorder and tripod with me and recorded it for posterity.

Been really nice here today with temperature just over 14C, warmest day of the year so far. Been out in the garden over the last two days, boundaries are encroaching so out with the billhook and the small chainsaw hacking it all back and burning. Started turning the garden this afternoon, I'm surprised how the soil is crumbling, you'd never know we've had as much rain.

Popped into the mobile phone shop this morning as my current contract is up for renewal so I wanted to see what I could upgrade to, I ended up not upgrading as I have no need for another phone, the one I have is less than a year old and there's not much point in changing a nearly new Samsung Galaxy S3 GTi9300 for the sake of it. So, no phone upgrade but reduced the length of contract from 24 to 12 months which cut the monthly tariff by just over £2 a month and doubled my free call minutes and data use and increased texts to unlimited.

Not the sort of conditions down here in Devon that you could do much today. As you can gather from Sean down there in Plymouth, all last night and all day today we've been blasted with phenomenal strong winds and buckets of rain causing a lot of damage, you've probably been watching on the National news about the railway lines being washed out at Dawlish. The barometric pressure is so low that it's off the scale, lower than I can ever recall.

The old saying is the same down here Bill and although it has been bright today for most of the day up to now we've had a few very heavy showers so, going by the old saying, it could go either way. Another February saying is 'February fill the dyke, black or white'. The forcast for here yesterday was for very strong gale force wind and heavy rain, we got neither here but they had it in Wales, it must have tracked a little further up the Country.

Happy new year everyone!

Just drew the turkey for tomorrow, and I don't mean with a pencil!

It's been very windy here today with gusts around the County reported to have ben up to 95mph with flooding, power lines and trees coming down. Rainfall, mostly between 2.30pm and 5.15pm as recorded on my digital gauge, was 38.1mm, that's nearly one inch and 1/2. It's now very calm and bright moonlight. Forgot to say that my barograph recorded the air pressure at 948.1hPa which is 28.05in of mercury, that's pretty low, if you've got an old barometer that has 'stormy' on the dial, the needle will be below the s. I've only known the pressure to drop this low once before in the last 3 years.

Click on the number of bids in the listing and then on 'show automatic bids', you'll see that those bidders with the greater buy/sales numbers were the earlier lower amount bidders and as you go up the bidder buyer/seller numbers get lower. Seller has probably got a bank of computers on his desk each with a different eBay account and he's bidding for it himself.

So what's so special about this model then?

Perhaps the wheels on these earlier models were not affected by the melt syndrome, I do think that the plastic they were made of was harder than the ones that suffered the melt.

Going by the box condition it would be very difficult to replicate the original looking wear around the edges but as far as the tractor goes I would be just a tad cautious, would the rear wheels not be showing a degree of the old wheel melt by now?, or was that just reserved for the later 5000?

We've had a couple of squally snow showers here late morning since last posting but it's back to a clear blue sky again now but still a very cold N wind. Outside temp at present is reading 3.1 C.

Wall to wall sunshine down here, cold and very chilly N wind, there's been a very light dusting in North Devon overnight on the highest parts of Exmoor.

Seems like another day here of blustery showers so not a lot will be going on today, hedge trimming is now cancelled due to how sodden the fields are but the road hedges are still being done. One little job to do today is to fire up the chainsaw and log up an oak limb that's come off a tree on the hedge on the farm track behind where I park my Land Rover, it came down yesterday but wasn't as a result of the nearly storm on Saturday, the tree isn't that big but spreads out about half way up to five near upright branches and three of them have collapsed about two foot from where they start off the main trunk, noticed they were hanging last Wednesday, they look like there's been a weight on them, like the way heavy snow breaks down the limbs on trees and leaves them splintered and hanging, can't get up the tree to cut them down so I will leave them alone, they'll come down naturally sometime.

We should be discussing this in the weather topic really John but the local news this afternoon said that the storm had not developed as much as expected as it reached us but developed more as it tracked across the Country and beyond, now in Denmark it's developed fully and they are, or were a few hours ago, feeling its full might. It could have been a lot worse.

Been waiting all day for my electrician to come and put a new fused switch in my borehole well head, didn't have any cold water last evening and investigating the switchgear revealed that the fused switch was very black and fried, don't know what caused it, could be condensation seeing the fuse didn't blow, all done now, good job that we here didn't get the storm that was forecast, we did have quite severe wind but nothing like the Eastern Counties suffered although we did have a lot of rain, my weather station recorded 87.3mm between 15.30 Sunday to 0730 today, that's an awful lot of water!

It's not the money that bothers me really as it didn't cost a bean to make it and the postage wasn't much, it's the fact that he never even bothered to ask in the first place and never bothered to acknowledge that he'd received it, which he obviously did, I'm sure I would of heard if he hadn't, it's the principal. I still have his details so I'll drop him a communication one day to see if he's still alive and perhaps bring him to the surface again, that's if he bothers to have the courtesy to reply but even if not he'll know that I haven't forgot about it, an elephant never forgets!

Just going through emails to delete old and unwanted ones came across a few between myself and another person who used to be on the forum. I had an email from this person out of the blue, he had not been active on the Forum for about 2 years but was still looking at it from time to time and still collecting. He remembered the McConnell front loader bale slave that I had made and I remember at the time that he asked if I could make him one, this never happened because I never heard from him again until he emailed me asking if I could still do one for him so after a few to and fro emails I made one and sent it to him with printed instructions how to fit it to his Britain's front loader, well, that was the last I've heard from him . I don't know why and the circumstances why but I think that was the very last time I did a favour like this for anyone, I think that in the future they would have to pay first! Perhaps I'm too soft.

Went to a fairly local farm sale today, friend of mine selling off his rubbish and a few better things. Ransomes 'Robin' 2 furrow plough, good useable order and painted made £480. Massey Ferguson 4 furrow grey plough, set to 18", front furrow bent, bits missing and a very worn cross-shaft, made £230. Lister D 1ph stationary engine, running really well, unrestored made £120. Nuffield DM3 with Horndraulic front loader, non-runner, left outside for a few years made £550. Massey Ferguson 1958 35 with flat top mudguards and Lambourne safety cab, good runner, looked rough made £1850. No buyers premium, VAT charged on the farm items.