[AT] Re: NAA Grader Blade - Instant gratification

[Larry D. Goss]

Hey Farmer, if the governor has his way, it looks like you may be living
next to a toll road around Indianapolis.  Whoopteedoo!

Larry

-----Original Message-----
From: at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com
[mailto:at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com] On Behalf Of Francis
Robinson
Sent: Friday, November 10, 2006 8:31 PM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: RE: [AT] Re: NAA Grader Blade - Instant gratification

	Boy oh boy have we ever gotten spoiled...   ;-)   Yeah, I can
sometimes be
guilty too...  We want to do a piddly little driveway and if we can't do
it
like the guys clearing a hundred miles of road a night or the guys that
clean dozens of huge parking lots before the stores open we consider our
equipment to be junk. Heck, I used to shovel my drives by hand and felt
lucky to have a good shovel. We used to mow an acre of yards with a
non-engine power reel mower and a scythe. Today when we drive through a
subdivision with postage stamp yards they all have 20 HP lawn tractors
and
almost not enough room to turn it around.
	Do I want to go back? Of course not... Shucks, I have an old
county highway
blade I use on the back of my 4020 and enough mowing equipment to mow
half
of the township.   ;-)   "BUT" when a bunch of guys mostly on a few
acres
get to discussing whether the kind of tractors that we farmed several
hundred acres with will clear a 100 foot drive way I just laugh my a$$
off...   ;-)   My father did all of the farming with a 9N at one time
and
used a McCormick 10-20 for some of the disking and hay chopping after
about
1946. He was farming several hundred acres and over half of it was away
from
home and in 3 other places. He also did custom work on the side. When we
moved to this farm in 1951 we were using that 9N and a TO-20 Ferguson to
farm several hundred acres. A Deere MC was added about 1953 and when the
1953 Jubilee came here new  in early 1954 it was the "big" tractor. We
never
gave it a thought that we sometimes had to work at getting thing done or
done right. We just did what we had to do. If you got stuck disking you
unhitched the disk, drove the tractor out and then pulled the disk out
with
the long chain you always carried on the tractor. After you got it on
solid
ground you hitched back up and kept going until you got stuck again. If
you
were plowing really deeply drifted snow and now and then you had to use
a
scoop shovel to move a bit of it to get through that is what you did.
Every
single piece of equipment had to "fully" justify itself in actually
saving
enough money to pay you back. Just making it a little easier was not
enough.
	When these "will it do it" discussions crop up they "REALLY"
make me miss
our great old friend Cecil Monson... Cecil would be chuckling too and he
would remind us of all those zillions of hours he spent plowing with a
McCormick 10-20 up in MN. Dang, I miss Cecil...  A true gentleman and
the
king of common sense.

	Hey Dave, take the free one... I would always recommend a 7'
blade but the
price is a lot better on the freebie.   ;-)   Surely you can find some
old
curved boiler-plate to make an extension for each end. Trust me, you
don't
have to worry about enough power to handle it. Yes more weight will help
both front and rear and with good tires traction will be fine unless
there
is ice under it. In that case your NAA will have about the same traction
as
my 4020, almost none...   ;-)   You might consider scrounging a couple
of
sets of half worn out semi chains and putting them together to be long
enough. They should be wide enough for your NAA tires but if not you
could
always add a few links to each cross chain or every other cross chain.
You
would never wear them out plowing your drive but semi drivers have to
keep
theirs replaced. I have a pallet of them here someplace that I want to
make
up into sets for my #$%& CUB and my Yanmar 1500. I'm not sure why, if we
have an inch of snow I'll just stay home.   ;-)




--
"farmer"

The brave may not live forever but the easily frightened may never live
at
all.

Francis Robinson
Central Indiana, USA
robinson at svs.net




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Remembering Our Friend Cecil Monson 11-4-2005
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