Category: Farm
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John Deere A Pulling Straw Wagon
This is a video of my restored 1947 John Deere A pulling a wagon loaded with 3×3 straw bales (1/2 ton alfalfa sized). Although we have newer and more appropriate tractors for such a task, it is fun to see the A that I worked so hard on over the past year doing some real work. Not to mention that it sounds good too! I can’t begin to describe how much work, time, and effort has gone into getting it where it is now. Even though she isn’t painted nor the most pretty tractor, it is much further ahead then I thought it would be at this point. When I pulled it out from its resting place (where it had been as long as I can remember) a year ago I told myself that I would work on it ‘a little here, and a little there’ and that it would take about ten years to complete. I never would have imagined that I would have it to the point where it is currently at only a year later. The list of things that were wrong with it include a locked-up motor, seized up brakes, rotted rims, missing carburator, no front tires, rotted/leaking water return pipe, rotten/gone mag, rusted valves, completely-filled with debris cooling system (hadn’t had a cap on the radiator in years), and on and on! It also had a mouse nest in one of the cylinders! It had been sitting out for as long as I can remember–so when I brought it home I looked at it and asked myself, “what have I done getting myself into such a project!”. Needless to say, now that it is starting to bear some fruit from my labors, it makes it all worth it. Plus it’s been fun, too!
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JD 4230 with 945 MoCo Swathing Alfalfa Video + Timelapse
This is a video of me swathing (windrowing) a small alfalfa field next to my parent’s place. I love seeing old footage and videos on our farm–which not much exists of. So, I try to record this type of stuff because maybe some day someone will find it as interesting as I do.
The video is of a John Deere 4230 pulling a John Deere MoCo 945 pull-type rotary windrower.
To create the video, I used two cameras, my cell phone (located on the top of the barn, doing the time-lapse), and a GoPro mounted onto the tractor and swather. I used three mounts on the swather–one on the back of the cab, one on the front-right of the swather, and one on the back of the swather. I didn’t point the camera down far enough when it was on the back to get anything that was really useful, so I didn’t use much of that video. I tried to show time-lapse and footage that show roughly the same thing. It’s not the greatest video in the world, but I thought it was pretty impressive for a first attempt.
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John Deere 4020 FWA Loading Hay HD 2012
This is a video of a John Deere 4020 loading half-ton bales onto a wagon being pulled by a John Deere 4230 on August 1, 2012.
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A Day On The A
Having spent so much time restoring the John Deere A, I tried to use it for a few little tasks around the farm. Here’s a video of it harrowing a pasture and hauling some half ton alfalfa bales. Also included is a few photos of the restoration process.
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April 2012 Photo Journal
Here’s my photo journal for April 2012. Sorry I’m a bit late–with the days getting longer it’s harder to find time to do stuff like this (but easier to find time to take photos). What’s neat about this month is you get to see the change in landscape as the snow leaves and the valley starts to green up.
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1939 John Deere A and Spring Baby Calves
Here’s a video that was taken up at the calves. This video is similar to the previous post, except it has more of the calves and shows the tractor stationary.
Our beef cattle calf in the spring, and we feed them during the summer on the range, so our beef is only Alfalfa and grass/range fed (organic).
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Drive to the beef cattle on a 39 John Deere A
I took a nice little stroll to the beef cows that are currently on the dry farm on the 1939 John Deere Model A. I’ve been working on the tractor most of the winter, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to warm the motor up a bit and let it stretch its legs. It was so pretty that I decided to film it. Since I’m just holding my camera, it’s a little bumpy. The video shows the beautiful west hills in Freedom, Wyoming (which is actually in Idaho) on the Robert Weber farm.
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1939 John Deere A Winter Drive
Driving around the 1939 John Deere A after doing some work on it throughout the winter. We replaced the radiator core, muffler, and rebuilt carburator. This is the same tractor that I made the time lapse video reassembly of. It’s amazing how much work you end up doing any time you decide to tear down into one of these things. You go to fix one thing, and find that there are two more things that need to fix.
