Monday, November 23, 2009

Food Fun Facts...

OK, it's official I'm only eating old lint and dirt. Nothing else is safe. Sigh. I just read an article in the Times, and it made me cringe. Especially the quote

"Today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 300,000 Americans are hospitalized and 5,000 die from food-borne illnesses each year. Some 76 million are sickened"

That means the CDC estimates almost a quarter of us get some form of food poisoning every year. No wonder since the giants (Tyson, etc.) steadfastly refuse to test their foods for pathogens. I read somewhere that Costco does test its meats, pushes suppliers to do so and as a result Tyson won't do business with them. Maybe if WalMart would test it's incoming food (maybe they do?) suppliers would have no choice. Sure doesn’t seem like Congress is going to do anything about it.

I wish the lawyer in the article all the luck in the world. Sue them all penniless. I'll take $4/lb beef over a kid in a coma any day of the week.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Some Random Snaps of the Farm

A Midget White Turkey (that's the breed name) some Large Black Hogs and one senic shot. Enjoy!







Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Odds and ends

'Tis the season for farm repairs. I've got a number of parts for the Baler (NH 283) and my uncle is going to weld up one part they don't make any more (twine finger bar). I'll either be welding up the plunger shield or buying a new one. I think it's fixable. The fun part is I need a grinder to get the broken mounts off of the plunger and I need to make new ones. The shield was being held on by a single bolt. Nice. Also have remedied the hydro pressure reservoir leak, busted hay dog springs (why my knotter quit working) and have some new teeth. Oh, and I'll be replacing the bearing in the PTO shaft. In any event I should have one rock-em-sock-em baler in the spring.

I also finished replacing all the tires on the rake and it's ready to party as well.

Also resolved and issue with my draw bar hitch. My tractor (Kubota M6030 DTN) is an old orchard tractor, so the drag is to low for many draw attached implements. I had to put a draw bar on the 3 point. Problem is it kept the implement so far back that most of the PTO's didn't reach and required and extender. Hence the mangled bearing on my Baler.

Dave at Hard Rock Machine in Walla Walla made me a new draw bar hitch with a 4" rise that was the same thickness of metal and (other than the rise) dimensions as the factory draw bar. Now stuff attaches to the draw bar, PTO's reach and it's heavy enough to still drag the Harrow Bed around when it's loaded (10,000-12,000 lbs).

Ahhh the harrow bed. Some modifications will be made to that as well. I need to be able to manually activate a return valve (the spring is worn). Once every thing was greased, it runs like a champ. Not bad of an implement form 1965. Now if I could figure out how to use it without making "Hay piles." Practice makes perfect.

A passle of Goats will be heading to the freezer, new farrowing pens will be going in the shop (for winter farrowings) and I will be heading up to Deer Park in the not too distant future to grab 4 tons of feed (should get us to June or July).