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I ridged up the spuds a couple of days ago whilst waiting for the horses’ water buckets to fill. I think I may have overdone it a little because I don’t think I’ll need to do it again! The ground was rock hard so I went up and down with the Earthquake to loosen it, then pulled it up with a large hoe that was my grandad’s. I covered nearly every plant with a fresh layer of soil but they have nearly all come through after two days and so I’m breathing more easily now.
We have had to fence a large part of the plot off to protect it from the rabbits. The original tunnel that I made from weldmesh is now pretty well redundant as it is surrounded by a three foot tall barrier of chicken wire held up with Mrs. Geoff’s spare electric fence stakes. We had to do this because we were given some leek seedlings which needed to go in sharpish, and somebody else has let us have some pea seedlings as well, so the plot had to be expanded to cope.
We now have runner beans, broad beans, beetroot, leeks and peas besides the potatoes which kicked it all off. The plot now looks like Stalag Luft 3 at Sagan with all the wire around it and I’m half expecting all of the potatoes to have escaped through three tunnels called Tom, Dick and Harry when I come to dig them up.
As for Mrs. Geoff’s cockerel, Guy, which she named after Guy Martin because it looks like he’s got mutton chop sideboards, I’m not letting him near anything that’s got two wheels!
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It’s raining today so no work on the farm to do that can’t be put off until tomorrow. I also received the latest edition of The Cultivator today (well done, Alan; a good read despite the absence of any shows to report on) and re-read my piece in the front, telling everyone that I had re-started the rebuild of the rare Trusty. As you can probably guess, it has shamed me into doing some more on it!
The reason it had stalled again was that I had fitted the engine onto the chassis and the four mounting holes in the base were half-a-hole out of line. The engine was pushed hard up against the clutch housing and so there was no adjustment. Thinking back to all of the other Trusty rebuilds that I’ve done I remembered that the JAP 5 engines had short heads fitted in the crankshaft seal carrier on the output side. I’ve made the classic error of replacing the four carrier bolts with new ones and forgotten about the height of the head- in this application it’s critical.
As you know, I’ve packed away all of my workshop in readiness for moving house and so what would be an easy five minute job on the lathe is now made much more complicated. Not to be outdone, however, I sat down and had a think (contrary to what Mrs. Geoff says, I can do two things at once but I prefer to prioritise). If I mounted the bolt in the chuck of the pillar drill I could spin it like on a lathe and if I made an extension to the drill table I could use my angle grinder to make a horizontal cut.
I do have some 1.6mm thick cutting blades for the grinder which are brilliant, and just right for this job. Five minutes later and I had four new bolts with reduced heads which were all the same size! Amazing!
Now all I’ve got to do is put it all back together again. The paint’s drying at the moment, so you’ll have to wait a bit for the finished pictures.
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With this warm weather I have been watering at both ends of the day- it coincides with filling the horses’ water buckets and so it is no hardship to spend another five minutes soaking the spuds. The first row is completely up now (they were Jean’s seed potatoes) and the second and third rows are just coming through in places (these were Mrs. Geoff’s pantry finds).
We have swelled the rows with some broad beans which were planted in a double row, staggered to economise on space, and some beetroot seedlings that we found going cheap at the local garden centre. Because they wouldn’t last the night with the rabbits around I used an old offcut of weldmesh that was in the garage, bent and folded over the row to protect them. It was buried into the soil about three inches along each side and so far it has got them stumped, but they have been trying hard!
We found a couple of Gooseberry bushes that looked a little worse for wear down at the garden centre, so we took those to plant as well. The observant ones among you will notice that I’ve also left an old spade at the edge for the Robin to sit on when supervising our efforts. I think he approves.
Something that has got me spitting feathers is the idiot who emptied my water bowser overnight last week. Mrs. Geoff started up the engine to drive the pump to fill the horses’ buckets and came over to tell me that there was none coming out. All the taps were on, I had checked the night before and there was still 12″ of water in the tank, so when I checked the tank and found nothing in it I was not happy. On closer inspection it looks like somebody unscrewed the suction pipe from the pump, drained the water and then screwed it back on. It is now screwed up tight with my biggest pair of water pump pliers and I doubt that I could get it off again without a struggle!
Unfortunately we have a public footpath that runs diagonally across the farm and it passes within 10 yards of the bowser. The amount of people walking the path has to be seen to be believed and every now and then you seem to get a coach party with screaming kids, adults on mobile ‘phones and gran and grandad following at the back. It’s a full time job keeping up with the litter they drop. I suppose that it’s a sign of the times that people can’t leave other people’s property alone.
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Sorry for the lack of updates, but I have been busy doing what I said that I was doing!
Firstly the engine went back together with no problems and fitted back onto the Earthquake. It fired first time (honestly!) but stopped after a couple of turns. Second time it started and ran sweetly, so I pumped up the one tyre and went off to do some rotavating.
It has now had three passes in first gear, each one at right angles to the previous one and each one a notch lower on the depth stop. There is still a lot of fibrous root material in the soil but at least it is all chopped up now, so it is ready for planting.
Secondly I needed a water source close by- the “allotment” is over 100yds away from the house- so I gave my water bowser a bit of a going over. It hasn’t been used for two years and when I looked inside the tank it had a carpet of green algae across the bottom and about 18″ up the sides. The pressure washer had limited success and the green algae just blocked up the outlet and so there was nothing else for it but to climb into the tank and bucket out the water. Mrs. Geoff emptied the bucket and passed it back for me to refill and before long we had it epty again. I unscrewed the filter inside the tank (I didn’t know that it had one) and took a scrubbing brush and hose pipe around every part to get it clean. It is now spotless inside and ready for use. As you can see from the pictures it is now on the plot with two hoses attached to the pump- one goes through the hedge to water the horses and the other will water the allotment.
Jean is planting spuds today and we will put some of ours in tonight. I found a bag in the garage that had been forgotten and it was full of sprouted spuds! I can’t waste them, so we give them a go.
When I was cleaning out the water tank I had to keep coming up for air because it was a hot day and the sweat was streaming off me. Our neighbour was watching and commented that I looked like Lieutenant Gruber in his “Little Tank”! My reply is not for your tender ears!
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