Mr Skippy the engineer… Again…

So, I’ve recently been doing some overhaul/repair work on bits of farm machinery that have been lying around the place since the last ice age. Most of the work is simply trying to get old imperial bolts off, and replacing them with metric, because I do love metric and those freaking 16ths and stupid fractions of inches were annoying me. I am not a fan of imperial, stupid measuring system.

This was my first one, a cultivator thingy. I initially had to weld one of the supports that goes to the top link back in place, but the only welding experience I’ve got is some introduction stuff from when I did Aerospace… Long time ago… So I took it up to the Farm Workshop and let them weld it on. Next I had to thin out the tines a bit, giving the current 3 at the front, centre and in line with the tyres, two in the gaps, then 3 in the same as the front, then 1 in the centre at the back. These were all fitted with shiny M10 bolts… You have no idea how annoyed I was with the dumbass imperial bolts on it before……….

Oh it’s beautiful…… Mmmmmm M10s…

 

Next up was another cultivator that has been missing a tine for a long time… It has been a door wedge in the root store for quite some time.

Simply job of reattaching it…

Happy days!

This is a little bit of a boring one

Smokey!

Now then.

So, it is winter/spring time. Technically it is winter, though with recent weather it’s seeming more and more like spring is here. The other day it went up to 13^oC, pretty toasty for a January day!

I’ve just come off the back of a week of morning milking on High Farm. This entails getting up at 5am, walking to High Farm, about 15 minutes away, having 1st breakfast, then making a big pot of coffee (Actually I’ve been experimenting, and discovered that 50/50 coffee and hot chocolate is amazing. Very tasty…Sorta a mocha).

Then it’s off to the barn, to chase some cows into the milking parlour and the rest is kind of self evident. Now, a 5am start does sound simply unpleasant, but it does have some nice side effects.

First of all you see the sun rise, and usually, the moon set. This was taken just before breakfast I think. The moon was just dipping below the horizon, as the sun came up on the other side, giving the moon a lovely yellow/golden colour.

The downside being that I get a distinct lack of sleep and then have to work hard all day…

But anyways! With Winter, the rangers usually burn areas of the moors around Yorkshire. In the summer the moorland is too dry and can just spiral out of control, and around now gives the heather just enough time to grow shoots which the grouse love.

The smoke often blows over the valley, which in the evening gives some very nice silhouettes against the sun.

 

What else… Oh, I went to York recently and got a rather nice photograph of the sunset:

 

I’ve got some more, but they’re still on my camera, which is not currently with me!

Anyways, sleep time! Skipper out.