I never passing up an excuse to drive the tractors on a beautiful fall day, I used the opportunity to do some blade and box scraper work to fill in the pivot tracks. Though not a necessary task, it makes working up the ground in the springtime much smoother and is better on the equipment.
I used the John Deere 2010 Utility to fill in the tracks with an Allis Chalmers three-point blade, and I then used the John Deere 435 (2-53 Detroit Diesel) to finish it with a box scraper. Looking back, I should have used drag harrows and will do that next time instead. It tended to clump up some, so I’ll know how to do it better next year.
Over the past few years, I’ve had several requests to create a calendar featuring some of my tractor and nature photography. Well, I finally built up the ambition to go and print/create such calendar. I’m introducing the 2017 Old Iron calendar, featuring some of my tractor photos taken throughout different times of the year. I only have John Deere tractors, so the calendar is mostly John Deere (with one exception in December). Please visit the following link to view/order a calendar. Thank you very much!!
This is a video I took of the sunset that we had on March 24, 2012. The view is from Weber Lane looking towards Black Mountain and the North East mountains of Star Valley.
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.
Since we had Monday off for Presidents Day, I took the opportunity to go on a quick ride up Deer Creek. The snow was pretty nice and it is close enough to home that it allowed the dogs to come and have a good time too. The video here shows me on my 2008 800 Polaris Dragon with a 163 track. The snow has been a little late coming this year, but the past few storms have seemed to be an attempt to make up for it.
This year I’ve decided to once again do a photo journal. However, unlike previous attempts, I am only going to take one photo a day, and upload the entire month as a single post, instead of a post every day. These photos are just that–a journal. They are not meant to be glamourous or overly beautiful. They are meant to show aspects of my day. Every day.
It’s hard to believe that we are coming up on one year since we burned down the “Old House”. This house was on our farm from about 1914 to March 16th, 2011. The home was built by my grat-grandfather Lawrence Weber and his siblings for their mother, my great-great grandmother Verena Weber, whom was born in Switzerland and came and settled as an LDS immigrant. She lived in the house for only 2-3 years before she died (according to the information I have received). I suppose it was about that time that Lawrence Weber took over what is currently the Weber Farm, where he ended up raising his family and living until his death in January of 1949. My grandfather, Rex, lived in this house until marrying my grandmother and building their own home, which was built next to this house.
This house was a very beautiful building in its time. It had some lavishing woodwork on the outer trim and other parts of the exterior. I’d even go as far as to say that it was one of the most beautiful homes in the valley at the time it was built. Unfortunately though, it fell into disrepair as it became a storage place for old car junk and other items. After this started happening it became clear that no one was ever going to fix it up, and in the past few years it had started to become a dangerous place to be around.
After the house finished burning down, it left some interesting traces of how it was constructed. It was built on a rock foundation, which was capped in the early 40s. It also had two brick chimneys and one cinderblock chimney, which I believe was added later when they made the edition to the kitchen. We have since collected all of the bricks and rocks.
Although this video and photos probably doesn’t seem very interesting to random people, to those that have a connection to it (especially us that still live on the farm), watching it burn was a very emotional time and experience. If the video seems a little overly dramatic for you, I apologize. I tried to capture it how it felt to us.
