Getting a cheap lawn tractor

 For many years I have been mowing the orchard with a slasher mounted on my tractor. This was perfectly fine while the fruit and nut trees were little more than sticks in the ground but as they got bigger I had to stay further and further away from them with the mower lest I break branches off.

Another problem was that when it rained there were some areas where the ground got very soft and the weight of the tractor would break through the surface and I'd end up with a lot of deep ruts. Not a good thing.

I tried to mow the orchard with my nice ride-on mower with the catcher that I use to mow the house garden but it just wasn't up to the task. I also didn't want to ruin it so I started looking for another solution. Just going out and buying a heavy duty mower wasn't an option. 

As luck would have it, one of our friends moved to another part of the country and asked me to look after her ride on mower while she got sorted in her new place. When I collected it the mower had some defects that I fixed up after getting it home. The main thing was that the mower deck had a fair bit of rust so I cut that out and welded new steel back in.

This was a 17hp mower with a 38" side discharge deck which did very well mowing the orchard and driveway. Sadly after about a year our friend had bought some land and needed her mower back so the search was on for a similar mower.

It took a while but eventually I found a broken medium duty Husqvarna ride on that was for sale on an auction website and bought it for a modest amount of money. The transmission was thought to be broken so I had researched how to fix a hydraulic transmission and felt that was something I could do.

After picking it up and getting it home I put the drive belt on the transmission and to my delight the mower drove right off the trailer and into my barn. I did find out at that time that the biggest problem was that all the steel transmission mounts were torn and the transmission was hanging onto the mower more by luck than design.

Taking the transmission out was simplicity itself; I took the mower deck out from underneath and then just lifted the mower up and the transmission just fell out. 

There were some minor issues with the transmission but my local John Deere dealer was kind enough to give me the replacement part free of charge (thanks Tony!). 

The mower deck needed fixing as well because of rust and botched previous repairs so I bought some steel for that and welded it in.

I took the deck apart, stripped it, welded the new steel in, sanded it, and finally primed and painted it. After that is was time to do something about the transmission mounts. I fabricated three new mounts and welded two in while the third is bolted onto the front of the transmission.

A quick squirt of paint and it was time to put all of the bits together again. All of that took just a few hours each day over 3 weekends. Rescued the old battery with some long and slow charging and I now have a 22hp 42" side discharge ride on mower that cost me slightly more than a third of what a fully working secondhand mower would have cost.

And it works wonderfully well. The first mow was through more than knee high grass and the mower never missed a beat. From here on in it will get an easier life because I've now caught up with the mowing again and the grass won't get that long again.

 Wellington Folk Festival 2020

Some pictures of the 2020 musical weekend away.

Almost ready to depart and parked in front of my workshop

We left fairly late in the day so when we finally got done setting up camp it was night already

The next day we got into the site setup work, putting out signs and marking the camping areas as well as the market stall areas. One of our regulars was there nice and early setting up their shop for the festival - and we got a few Ginger Beers from them before they even opened shop - Yeah Hardieboys!

Once the setup work was done we could sit back and enjoy the beautiful weather

 

And we enjoyed a wonderful twilight as well (as you can see the sun isn't quite gone yet)

Of course we enjoyed a night time Hardieboys Ginger Beer as well.

Finally, on Monday, on the way home we stopped briefly at the summit of the Remutaka Hill Road (555m) for a photo-op. From there we rolled home and parked everything up and started the cleaning. All in all an almost 300km round trip.

Back into it

Well, I've been back in the classroom for almost three weeks now and it's kind of tough to get back into the swing of things after the few months break I had over the summer. I almost wish that there was a summer school you could go to so you not only don't get out of the study habit, but you also accelerate getting your qualification.

It was great to have had the time off though because it allowed me to do a lot of jobs around the farm, catch up on my work at the church and also help out a friend tidy up his father's estate. My friend's father was a hoarder and had 40 years worth of collecting in his sheds, the garage, under the house and also in the ceiling. There were also piles of wood stacked outside as well as loads of steel. Once we cleared out four of the sheds I demolished them and took the materials to the rubbish dump. In the end we took well over 10 ton of things to the tip and at the end of each day I took about a ton of things home with me to add to my collection. My ute (pickup truck) and trailer got a very good workout. When it was time for me to go back to class there was still some stuff left to do but at least we managed to cut the job down to size and my friend is managing to carry on sorting things out by himself.

We started off with two weeks of lectures and the pace at which we set of was so fast I was struggling to keep up. I can only imagine how the rest of my year is coping. At the moment we're doing pharmacology, pathophysiology, health assessment and clinical skills. We are writing care plans, developing priorities for the first 24 hours of care on admission and exploring a range of diseases and how they might be treated.

Today was a great day, I spent all day in the library (no classes) and just read one of my text books. I got through almost six chapters which I have been able to summarise onto six A4 pieces of paper. Time well spent and it will make it easier in the future. I enjoyed doing it too, so there is hope yet that I will, once again, get into the study habit. Tomorrow I have a few things to sort out in town before I go back to the library and carry on summarising my text book.

This weekend there will be no, or very little, time for study because we are taking our shop to the Masterton Agriculture and Pastoral field days which are on from Friday to Sunday. The Wairarapa Folk Club is providing the music so I'll be busy going back and forth between the two places to make sure everything runs smoothly. I'm hoping to be able to also get some time to play my bass and do some singing. I might even get to play my harmonicas.

Busy times once again, but we're having fun!