Short days

The sun goes down way to quick, this time of year. And doesn’t get up soon enough. I get up and set in a room lit with lightbulbs. I need sunlight!

Guess I need to get my gro-light out and set under it!

We went to town the other day and I got new fuel filters for the tractor, as it has been chugging whenever you give it more throttle. Put the new filters in and tried to bleed the air out of the system. Not much luck. Called a neighbor who used to mechanic for a living and he told me what to do. Part of it was dragging the tractor around until it finally purged it’self of air and ran correctly.

Didn’t work.

The roads are muddy and Chance got splattered bad. He wasn’t happy.

So we went back to being Sherlock Holmes. Discovered that there was no fuel in the final filter. Took it off and dug around with a wire in the line between the two filters. No luck. Unhooked the line coming into the primary filter and discovered it only drip, dropped!

Aha!, as we say in sluethdom. (Well that’s what I say anyway)

Chance hooked up the air copmpresser and I shot a little air up the line into the tank. I listened to the bubbling and took the air hose away.

Wow, we had fuel then! Lot’s of fuel! Never thought to be ready to turn the fuel line off.

We spilt some, got everything hooked back together. Bled the lines and the injector pump. Hit the starter and the tractor fired up and never even sputtered.

I hate working on machines as I don’t understand them and oil and fuel and grease is hard on my hands, but I got to admit, I could feel a little of what a good mechanic feels when he tears down an engine, re-builds it and puts it all back together and has a new and improved peice of working machinery!

But I will harness the team today to feed the bales, thank you. I get much more enjoyment out of that and they run on cheaper fuel! 🙂

And they don’t make my hands break open and bleed!

Come on sunshine!

I’m afraid we are…..

We Have Become A Nation Of Thieves

By WALTER E. WILLIAMS | Posted Wednesday, November 19, 2008 4:30 PM PT

Evil acts can be given an aura of moral legitimacy by noble-sounding socialistic expressions such as spreading the wealth, income redistribution or caring for the less fortunate. Let’s think about socialism.

Imagine there’s an elderly widow down the street from you. She has neither the strength to mow her lawn nor enough money to hire someone to do it. Here’s my question to you, and I’m almost afraid of the answer:

Would you support a government mandate that forces one of your neighbors to mow the lady’s lawn each week? If he failed to follow the government orders, would you approve of some kind of punishment ranging from house arrest and fines to imprisonment?

In Favor Of Slavery

I’m hoping that the average American would condemn such a government mandate because it would be a form of slavery, the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another.

Would there be the same condemnation if instead of the government forcing your neighbor to physically mow the widow’s lawn, the government forced him to give the lady $40 of his weekly earnings? That way the widow could hire someone to mow her lawn.

I’d say that there is little difference between the mandates. While the mandate’s mechanism differs, it is nonetheless the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another.

Probably most Americans would have a clearer conscience if all the neighbors were forced to put money in a government pot and a government agency would send the widow a weekly sum of $40 to hire someone to mow her lawn.

This mechanism makes the particular victim invisible, but it still boils down to one person being forcibly used to serve the purposes of another. Putting the money into a government pot makes palatable such acts that would otherwise be deemed morally offensive.

This is why socialism is evil. It employs evil means, coercion or taking the property of one person, to accomplish good ends, helping one’s fellow man.

Helping one’s fellow man in need, by reaching into one’s own pockets, is a laudable and praiseworthy goal. Doing the same through coercion and reaching into another’s pockets has no redeeming features and is worthy of condemnation.

Some people might contend that we are a democracy where the majority agrees to the forcible use of one person for the good of another. But does a majority consensus confer morality to an act that would otherwise be deemed immoral?

In other words, if a majority of the widow’s neighbors voted to force one neighbor to mow her law, would that make it moral?

I don’t believe any moral case can be made for the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another. But that conclusion is not nearly as important as the fact that so many of my fellow Americans give wide support to using people. I would like to think it is because they haven’t considered that more than $2 trillion of the over $3 trillion federal budget represents Americans using one another.

Madison Rejected

Of course, they might consider it compensatory justice. For example, one American might think:

“Farmers get Congress to use me to serve the needs of some farmers. I’m going to get Congress to use someone else to serve my needs by subsidizing my child’s college education.”

The bottom line is that we’ve become a nation of thieves, a value rejected by our founders. James Madison, the father of our Constitution, was horrified when Congress appropriated $15,000 to help French refugees. He said, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”

Tragically, today’s Americans would run Madison out of town on a rail.

Copyright 2008 Creators Syndicate, Inc

Another day….

I went out and found my missing steer and got him in. Poor ol’ Beav must have twisted his ankle a little while sorting yesterday or something as he was just a little lame in the right front. I’ll give him a few days off and see if it works.

Chance helped me and we got the steers in and loaded. Then I headed out and fed. Kind overcast, windy and chilly this mornin’. Not nearly as nice as yesterday. Had to hook on to one truck and pull him back up on the road. He was going to try to back in off the main road. Not a good idea.

Hooked up the team and hauled 4 bales out to the heifers. Probably haul out 5 tomorrow. Need some more hay trucked in.

Had some parts of my bale wagon get to flopping today, so this afternoon I went out and worked on it. These bales are all bigger and heavier than I had when I first built it so I made it so I have more leverage and then redid the front where you brace your feet and yourself when you are driving. Seems like I done something cuz I am tired!

Called about a couple teams advertised in the paper and they got $4500 and $3500 for them. Man, I guess I ought to be breaking them and selling them.

Beautiful

What a nice day. Makes up for a lot of them cold windy boogers we’ve had. Chance and I got the yearling’s in and sorted the steers from the heifers. Only had one get away and had to get it back. Short one, but we could have missed him amongst the others. I’ll see if I can find him in the morning before the trucks get here.

Then Hope and Chance headed for town to do some hurry up business. I went and fed hay with the tractor, seeing as we had cattle scattered in 3 different pastures now and it was after dinner. Gramma and I went over to CRS and got some extruded soybean and when we got home I unloaded it and then mixed some up with salt for a limiter and we hauled it up west where we kicked our cows.

Tractor is missing when you give it very  much throttle so I just called and am trying to get some fuel filters for it. I hope it’s only that, but am afraid it might be the injector pump. I can afford filters, but not a new  or re-built pump. If I can limp it along until Thanksgiving when these heifers are supposed to go, then I can get by with my team until I can get it fixed. I have my bales set to where I can feed with the team pretty handy, if it does quit on me. Probably try and feed some with the team tomorrow after we ship these steers.

Fixin’

Went out to feed hay with the team today. Hauled out 2 bales and while hauling the third a part of the bale wagon broke so we dropped the bale and came back and Chance unharnessed while I took the tractor and continued on. We had ruined a rim on the tractor a day or so ago, but one off the other old tractor fit.

Then Chance went to put a new upper elelment in the water heater, but of courses it was different than the one Cindy had brought home. So we made some hurried calls and got a part to fix it at Union Center, which was good as we couldn’t have any water until we got it fixed! He is doing the finishing touches on it as I type this.

Cooler today but still 30 or so. Lite breeze to hardly none.

Sort yearlings tomorrow and ship the steers on Wednesday.

Warming still

Got up pretty nice today. Maybe 45. Sure made some water and settled some snow.

I had some yearlings up in the neighbors. He called last night. His cows had come thru a fence in to us and he hadn’t fixed the fence when he took them back. The heifers of course found it and went visiting and were really enjoying his little square bales of second cutting alfalfa that they hadn’t gotten all picked up yet. We got them back and  me and Beav and the dogs moved them into another one of our pastures and then I gave them a real good feed.

Might have a load of hay coming in the morning and supposed to ship the steers off this Monday. Hay coming and yearlings leaving. Works for me!

Warming

It was 30 deegrees when I walked out about 6 to plug in the tractor. Yesterday I dug to the last stack yard of hay I hadn’t gotten to yet. Then in the afternoon when I hauled the trash out I could see yearling’s scattered and grazing. I will need to get hay in to replace what I have been feeding and what I will feed. But I’ve got some fairly close by that I can buy and a neighbor who will truck it in. And now the weather is supposed to warm up and into the 40’s and 50’s. I hope it melts all the snow off the flats and close to bare ground where the wind wipped it off, mostly. Most people don’t know that the wind is what made this cow country. The winds blow the snow to the southeast sides of the hills and leave the northwest sides almost bare. Thus there is little to no snow on top of the grass so the cattle could graze. And if you don’t pamper your cattle and make them dig for their dinner, they will. As soon as you start feeding them all the hay they need, they are content to strand around and beller at you to come feed them

Odd, we humans are so much like cattle! Or is it that cattle can be forced to act like humans?!

I love it when it warms up. Sorting the steers from the heifers in the coming slop will sure be fun!