The Farm (Updated 9/28)

My family has a piece of property about a hour and a half north of the cities. I think that it has been in the family for a little over a hundred years now. My Great Grandfather bought 40 acres of land and began to farm it. He quickly realized that he was not making as much money as he would have liked and quit to pursue other endeavors. As time went on he bought surrounding properties and there is now 280 acres of land. There are two good sized fields, lots of woods, and a river that runs through. It is a good place to go deer hunting and that is about it right now... Everything else to do with the property is work. There is always something that needs to be fixed or updated, but it keeps my Grandpa and Dad busy so that is good.

1953(?) Farmall Super M

Today's project is building a large shed that will house the above tractor and some other odds and ends. Three years ago my Dad restored another old Farmall and enjoyed it so much he decided to do it again. He says that this one has "Live" hydraulics so you can use the hydraulics while you are driving rather than having to come to a stop. It also has a wide base on the front rather than the narrow base on his other tractor.



 

Two trusses up.

When I got up there in the morning the walls were already up and the trusses were built. We had to lift the trusses up on to the frame, stand them up and put the supports across from one to the other. My Grandpa being an old Honeywell engineer is very meticulous with how things must be done and in what order. There is no convincing him to deviate from his plan. Sometimes this proves to be frustrating, but today everything went together very smoothly. No CAD  needed, just a pencil and a few pieces of graphing paper.

Getting there.

After we had everything up it was time for me to go up top and start screwing down the roofing. This is where having a nice drill comes into play. I have a cordless Ryobi that is adequate for small projects around the house, but is heavy and the battery life isn't great. My Dad brought his DeWalt with and it worked great. It was light, powerful and the battery lasted. The only issue that we ran into was the metal getting too hot. My shoes started to slip and I couldn't put my hands down because it would burn. There was one point where I though I was stuck sitting down and started to slowly slip down. I wasn't real worried because it was only about an eight foot drop, but I managed to get up and back to the peak where I could put a foot on each side. I screwed in the top, and they screwed in the bottom for the remainder of the day. I need to go back there and finish screwing it down in the middle.

From the inside.




From the outside



Done for the day.



At the end of the day we got everything accomplished that we set out to do and no one got hurt! It is fun working on projects where things are planned out properly and everything goes the way it should.





59 Cadillac



Side story. This is a 59 Cadillac DeVille that my Great Grandpa drove. It is the last year the they put the wings on the back and has the first stereo that you could preset the stations. He was t-boned by a drunk driver in Mora where the Vasaloppet statue sits in 1964 and there the car has sat since.

It is smashed in pretty good on the other side. There is no doubt that if the same thing happened today he would have been crushed to death. Instead, he had a few bumps and bruises and walked away relatively unscathed.