Fixed the tractor and made a scarecrow .... or a scare hawk in our case

Got the part back from the tractor place and installed it, got through the ditch and rotary hoed the bit I wanted to dig over and then drove back through the ditch and into the shed. It took a bit more digging to achieve all of this because both times I needed to reduce the ramp angle in the ditch to be able to drive through but I got it done. The tractor place did make a mistake when the assembled the bit in that they forgot to put the wheel studs in the hub. Luckily I'm pretty inventive and figured out a way around that problem without having to take the parts back again. I have no idea how much the repair bill is going to be, they're sending me a bill next month.

We have loads of newly hatched chickens running around and this is proving all too tempting for our local hawks. Since I'd rather nor shoot the hawks we decided to build a scarecrow.

Of course I wanted to build a scarecrow with fully articulating joints and one that I didn't have to rebuild every couple of years. So I put my thinking cap on (always a dangerous thing) and came up with a plan that involved me cutting up a whole lot of galvanised pipe I had hanging around. It took eleven bits of pipe of various lengths and a bit of ingenuity to make the joints and I had a all singing and dancing skeleton ............ but no head. At least a bit of pipe wasn't going to cut it as a head because it is really difficult to put a hat on a piece of pipe.

So I went and found an old piece of telephone pole and set to it with a chainsaw to do the rough carving. Then I sharpened up a few chisels and got my wooden mallets and carried on carving by hand. I ended up with a rather Hermann Munster'ish head but once I put the cap on it it didn't look half bad. Certainly good enough for a scarecrow.

I then put a few screws in its head and hung the head from the pole I had prepared to hang the scarecrow on. That looked rather amusing having this head dangling around. However fun it might have been the next task was to dress the skeleton and hang it from the head.

The results look pretty good and will be even better once we have stuffed the clothes with old hay. the idea of hanging the scarecrow and having moving legs and arms is so that it moves in the wind and the hawks are less likely to realise that it isn't a human standing there.

Here's hoping it actually works and we don't loose any chicks to those hawks. Otherwise the gun will have to be pressed into service. I wonder what roasted hawk tastes like?

Tractor + ditch = broken axle

There is a wee problem with the tractor at the moment. I was going to rotary hoe a part of the farm and getting there involved going through a ditch. Not usually a problem with a 4 wheel drive tractor with agricultural tyres with superb tread. Except that this time the rotary hoe hit the bank I had just come down and the tractor got stuck.

Again, this is not normally a problem, a bit of sweat expended swinging a spade and we're away again. Not this time though. After I had done the needed digging I tried to drive forward out of the ditch when .... a small 'bang' and I lost drive to the front wheels. Of course I stopped what I was doing and investigated and when I used the front end loader bucket to lever the front of the tractor up off the ground .... the right front wheel fell off! Unprintable words spoken with some vigour and then into problem solving mode.

The tractor is still stuck in the ditch but the front bevel drive is disassembled and ready to take to the tractor fixing place. A plastic bucket is keeping dirt and moisture out of the axle until I can get the bevel drive fixed and then reassemble everything. In the picture you can see the two bits that should be one intact bevel drive firmly holding hands with itself. Looking at the broken shaft it looks like there might be a flaw in the metal. In the second picture you can see a little dark spot in the shiny metal on the left. That dark spot shouldn't be there. If that's indeed a flaw then the axle might have broken at almost any time.

Just what I wanted when I'm trying not to spend money. Ugh! Hopefully it doesn't turn out to be too expensive and hopefully the parts don't have to be flown in from Japan.

The really good news about this mishap is that the axle didn't break while I was mowing one of the more hilly paddocks. If it had broken then; the tractor would have rolled down the hill for sure and that doesn't usually end well for the tractor driver.

Very soon the sequel of me driving out of the ditch and rotary hoeing what needs hoeing and safely crossing the ditch again will be posted (I hope).