[AT] Still thinning

Tue Aug 12 17:38:49 PDT 2008

     This subject line applies to my hair and farm equipment both.   :-)
     I think I found a buyer for my old IHC 4 row planter (with harrow in front) yesterday. One of Diana's brothers is wanting to start planting a fair sized plot of sweet corn to sell and he is looking for something cheap. I figure my scrap guy would give me around $100 for it as scrap so I'll offer it to my BIL for that. It "ran when parked".   :-)  And still should be fine.
     I was looking at my old IHC 4 row front mount cultivators today while I was mowing... I decided to get rid of them too. I used to have visions of showing them on a tractor but the hauling would be just silly. The front section is about 10' wide and in one piece. I hate to scrap them but I can probably get twice as much out of them for scrap (they are really heavy) as I could get selling them as cultivators even to a collector. I used to use them on my S-MTA but haven't used them at all in maybe 10 years.
    I have two old New Idea hay rakes (on steel) I am not using. I think I will save all 8 wheels and maybe the one trussed arch section of both frames and scrap the rest.
    My old John Deere rotary hoe will also go this month. It only has value as scrap unless I tear it apart and paint the hoe wheels like flowers and sell them. Those sell pretty well but I don't really need another project right now.
    My Old Gleaner F while still a decent old combine is also likely worth more as scrap than as a combine. There is not a lot of weight in the 15' grain head but that 4 row wide corn head is super heavy.
    It saddens me a little to scrap this stuff but I need to follow the money. If I took it to a consignment auction it would probably sell for a lot less than what my scrap guy will give me, still go to scrap and I would have to pay auction commission to boot.
    I was going to scrap about a dozen old rolls of fence wire back in a woods last year but it was beginning to crumble in places and I didn't really want the scrap guys scattering bits of wire all over the place while loading. Instead I planted Virginia creeper, big-leaf winter creeper and old English ivy around the base of them and they are almost invisible now under the vines. By next year they will be completely out of sight and with all of those vines on them it should all rust away completely in a few more years. Meanwhile it should be a super bird nesting habitat.
    I have about 5 small hopper bed wagons and I want to keep maybe two of them that are extra good. I will pull the beds from the other three and probably scrap them, nobody wants the small ones any more. I want to make a couple of flat bed hay wagon beds for those running gears. If I have enough hay wagons I won't have to unload them right away. I can just pull them in the barns and pull the pin and unload them when the timing is right. I have two loads of hay sitting on wagons in one barn right now.
    I have one  somewhat larger hopper wagon on a good reasonably heavy running gear and one very good (but needs paint) larger still EZ-Flow hopper bed on an EZ-Trail gear. I need to clean the EZ down and paint it to sell it. It should sell quite well here. Painting it will make a good January project in the shop. I still don't know what I will do with the mid sized wagon. I'll probably sit it out and sell it as is I also still have 3 other wagon running gears. Not real heavy but two would make decent smaller hay wagons OK so I'll keep them. The third is pretty good but is made from an old truck frame and is on 20" wheels. I'll probably scrap that one since most people don't like oddball stuff these days, everything has to look "store bought".
    I need to do some moving stuff around and sort some other smaller stuff. I'm still waffling about whether or not I want to sell my old Deere 4020 and all of my larger tillage implements. I am keeping stuff like seeders and my fertilizer / lime spreader etc.
    Retiring is a "process"...

--

farmer

Francis Robinson
Central Indiana USA
robinson46176 at hotmail.com

_________________________________________________________________
Get more from your digital life.  Find out how.
http://www.windowslive.com/default.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Home2_082008