Shop work

This week we've had snow and rain and wind and sunshine and the daytime temperatures are beginning to warm slightly.  Spring is making an effort to appear!

So, Reynald and I have kicked our shop work in to a little higher gear.  This was drill week.  Our goal is to finish up all that can be done indoors, by Saturday.  It's a reasonable and achievable goal.

Last week Reynald finished hard surfacing the billion harrow teeth, that someone has to now change out on the harrow!  Still too cold and wet to do that outdoor job, but you can see that we are ready to go when the weather cooperates!

A cute little cart filled with harrow teeth!

The gray color on the teeth is the hard surfacing.  This will make the harrow teeth wear much longer.  It took Reynald a long time to do this, but it will be worth it in the long run.

Once we finish the indoor work on the drills, there will still be a lot to do to have them field ready, but that all needs to be done out of doors.  Building the hitch, hooking the drills to the hitch, running hoses, running electrical for all the sensors etc.  It will be a several day project, but we hope, as of Saturday, we will be ready for the next phase of this project.

This is an empty drill frame.  Lots of stuff needs to be put back on before it is ready to seed.

These are the boot hangers.  Seven boot hangers go on each drill frame.  

Now the boot hangers are on!

I think this is called a lift arm.  There is a rod on the boot hanger, that you put a spring on then push that rod with the spring up through the lift arm.  

This shows the spring that goes on the boot hanger rod.  It is held in place with a cotter pin and cap.  

This is a Stoess Straightener.  They help keep the seed boot centered in the middle of the split packer wheel.

This is the drill boot.  Seed and fertilizer are delivered to the boot, which "drills" through the soil at a pre-set depth.  The hook on the boot is called the point.  We change these points every other year.  They wear quite a bit from dragging through the soil.  

This shows the boot hangers, the spring on the lift rod, the split packer wheels, the Stoess straighteners and the seed boots between the packer wheels.  You can see a round tube like opening at the top of the boot.  A hose will be attached to that tube that leads to the seed and fertilizer cart.  This is how the product is delivered to the seed boot.

We call this set of drill, Alicia's outfit, because this is the set that she will be running this fall when we seed our winter wheat crop!  My job will be to keep both seed and fertilizer at the ready.  But....there's a lot that needs to happen on the farm before we think even another second about any of this!