Dave's Great Big Day of Fun With Agricultural Equipment

It wasn't actually fun.

I got up to the Doomstead at about 10, which is pretty good for a bloke who's on holiday (especially as it's really 9), and tried to start the tractor. Flat battery. Trying to jump start it off the ute just about set my jumper leads on fire, but didn't actually help. I need new jumper leads, btw.

So, I made a quick trip to the local garage with the battery to see if he could charge it. It was going to take most of the day so, to avoid wasting the trip up (and all that fuel), I bought a new one. He had a pallet of bargains for $120, which isn't too bad.

The tractor started, so I began playing agricultural equipment Tetris to get to the slasher. When I tried to back up to drop the first bit of stuff off to one side, I found one brake was jammed on, and I couldn't reverse. (Other wheel spinning, which is alarming on a tractor.)

At first it looked like the footplate was pressing on the brake mechanism, because most of its bolts had fallen out. (Yeah, yeah, I fail at routine maintenance.) Once I had the plate off, and looked a bit closer, it was still jammed. Now, I've never adjusted the brake, and it worked fine last time I used it, but it was certainly adjusted too tight. It was a bitch to adjust, because the adjusting and lock nuts had been painted in place, but I got there in the end.

I've managed to slash the larger half of the paddock (yes, yes, I know), which is probably all I would've done anyway, and now I'm home, clean and fucked. Everything hurts.

Hiatus

Last year didn't go well - I couldn't take time off work to build. I was responsible for a complex project which was a technical success, but the users refused to sign off on it. For months.

I hope to get things underway again in spring. In any case, I'll be moving up to the Doomstead on retirement at the end of the year, even if I live in a caravan in the short term.