[AT] Re: NAA Grader Blade - Instant gratification

[Francis Robinson]

	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