[AT] Re: NAA Grader Blade - Instant gratification

[charlie hill]

Hi Farmer,

I agree with you but don't forget that Cecil had a whole yard full of 
equipment including a JD crawler and a backhoe.  Just because you can get by 
with less doesn't mean you have too.  Grins.

Charlie
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Francis Robinson" <robinson at svs.net>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Friday, November 10, 2006 9:31 PM
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
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> AT mailing list
> Remembering Our Friend Cecil Monson 11-4-2005
> http://www.antique-tractor.com/mailman/listinfo/at