Looking good. New roof that will kept the rain out. Chicken coop on wheels nice. Great to hear from you.
Bob
12 Likes
You’re remote enough those coons make good table fair. Corn feed from the field are the best im told. Storage on the hoof as kristijen says!
8 Likes
Thanks much for the update Chris !
Hope you give some thought to a storm room or shelter 
12 Likes
Chris, being new to the forum this is the first time to read this thread. You and your family are to be commended, you have done a great job and have a wonderful homestead. My wife and I came to western Pa to create our retirement homestead ten years ago and would want nothing more. Again, my hats off to you.
Kent Smith
10 Likes
Just FYI, you can now get ozone generators for dirt cheap on aliexpress. they are dielectric barrier discharge plasma reactors, which is a fancy way of saying a borosilicate glass tube with stainless mesh in it covered with aluminum foil. that runs at high frequency and voltage (low amps). They can be daisey chained together to get higher concentrations, or run in parallel.
I know you have a fancy water system and tank setup. But the last time I looked they were in the 100s of dollars.
Another year, another update… It’s been a busy year, there’s plenty to tell about!
New baby
We welcomed Hannah Debra Saenz to the family this spring. We are up to four little girls, 4 and under.
Debra was my mother’s name, she passed away in December from cancer. Though we are sad, the circle of life continues. She is buried here on the farm.
Tractor rebuild finished
Yes, the Massey Ferguson 150 is running again. This one’s been in the shop in pieces for a few years, I’ve just been really slow to button it up. It spun a bearing and tore up the crankshaft. I was able to get a new crank, pistons, sleeves, etc. Then it turned out the head was cracked. All in I think I had around $2000 parts and plenty of labor. Video of the first startup:
And first run of the bushhog:
I may paint it up nice someday, but for now it’s just a workhorse.
BCS 853 (Walk-behind tractor)
I just happened on this deal. A fellow in Cincinnati was selling a BCS 853 diesel, rotary plow, tiller, chipper shredder, and mower for a very good price. I brought it home and immediately put it to work plowing up the garden spot (see below). This is a luxury for me, but the diesels are hard to come by anymore and I love walk-behind tractors. It fills a very useful spot for me in tight spaces.
Ford 881 Powermaster with loader
This one came to me recently. I’ve been trying to offload the big flatbed truck for several years, but no buyers came forward. I tweaked the ad to say “would consider trades for a loader/tractor”. Couple months later, the truck was gone and this old Ford came home with me:
It needs some work. The front hydraulic pump shaft was stripped out, meaning the hydraulics were inoperable. I have since replaced that and gotten the loader working again. However now I find the engine leaks a tremendous amount of oil, so I’ll be diving into the top end to see what’s leaking. New gaskets all round should help. I’ll need the loader soon, because we will be working on a driveway.
Cabin
This was a project my brothers started on last fall, and I finished this summer. I wanted there to be a place for them to stay out here, so they felt free to come visit and work on projects without invading the house. We’re cramped for space anyways, so extra bunks are a good thing. It’s a one room 10x16 cabin, with standard framed walls and homemade trusses for the roof. Very basic, and designed to be towed with a tractor if necessary.
Greenhouse
This one is still in progress, but we got hoops raised and the main plastic installed. 25’ x 64’, single layer 6 mil plastic. Currently storing firewood to dry through the hot summer, will also be for starting plants next spring.
Dog
We got a dog to protect the chickens. Meet Daisy; half Beagle, half Great Pyrenees. She’s chewing everything to bits… but the girls love her.
Garden
Despite the new baby, we decided to plant a garden this spring. Using the new BCS, I was able to plow some ground, make raised beds, and planted a few things.
I also put up a deer fence:
Unfortunately most of the garden failed early on, due to dry weather and poor soil conditions. We are still learning, and our plan is to be better prepared for next year. The fence worked quite well at least.
Up next: Buried electric & driveway
This project is about to begin. I have had all the materials for a good while, but it wasn’t urgent. But we are about to start the driveway project, so I’m renting an excavator over Labor Day weekend (three days for one day price) and I should be able to trench the electric conduit as well as bury some culverts for the driveway. I bought geotextile fabric to go under the gravel, since we have soft bottomland soil here, and I don’t want to lose all our expensive gravel. The Fedex man called me this morning, to verify this delivery:
You’re looking at 2,200 feet of fabric, 13’ wide. It’s a long driveway.
Next I get to haul in some culverts… The fun is about to begin!
23 Likes
Making leaps and bounds Chris good on ya!
11 Likes
You guys accomplished a lot in a year, great work. 
Remember to plan in and take familytime together too, it is easy to just work work work when there is a lot to do.
9 Likes
Wow, thanks for posting chris! I know its sometimes a dunting task to find the time to get it all recorded. Especialy all at once, But we appreciate update.
12 Likes
Chris, did you hammer in those truss plates or come by a plate press?
8 Likes
I have a shop press which did the job. A little cumbersome to move the plates in and out, but much easier and better results than hammering (which I’ve done in the past).
12 Likes
Great pictures set ChrisKY.
Sometime if possible I’d like to hear a video of that diesel running working on your BCS.
Condolences on your Mother’s passing. Same-same for many of us too. Long illnesses challenge us all.
All’s we can do is to Live-Forwards. Thankful for the lessons we were taught.
Much respect for you and the family
Steve Unruh and family
18 Likes
Here you go Steve.
14 Likes
Chris you have done an amazing amount of work this last year.
One word if caution on that Ford 881. Those selectospeef transmissions are know for not actually shifting into park and eventually creeping away as you are getting off them. They have run over more than one person who was getting off to do something quickly with the tractor running supposedly in park. I owned on that a good friend of mind told me had all the updates to make it safe and definitely shift into park it was staped to be the fully updated version from the ford factory. I owned it for about 6 months when it decided it wanted to not shift into park for me. The shifter was in park and i was standing just starting to get off the tractor when it started moving. Being that i grew up on the farm i quickly sat back down and turned off the key. I then called my friend and told him he had a parts tractor because i wouldn’t trust it ever again and he told me for the price i paid at the time he would buy it for parts and swap in the 5 speed standard transmission. The disadvantage to the 5 speed standard is a 2 stage clutch peddle that makes live power hard to bale with as the baler shakes the tractor and your foot on the clutch.
Anyway my advice is never trust that ford 881 transmission it could walk at anytime so always turn off the engine before getting off the tractor and thus i would never let kids drive one.
Don’t mean to lecture on safety just wanted to share the very scary story i had from one of those transmissions.
Too bad too because that ford has a nice long stroke that builds great torque. I liked the tractor from the perspective of working it. There is a reverser for the standard transmission but they are hard to find and they reverse the pto as well. Good for loader work but you have to keep in mind the pto if you are doing field work.
The garden looks like a nice size. I would start by checking the PH up here in the north east the biggest problem we see is too acidic soil and lime is something not enough people use. But soil is local. I will say this summer was very hard on gardens here. Mine grew but not well and most of the fruit are wicked late to the point where i will be pushing the frost date to get anything. The cabbage is doing ok but slow the broccoli just made the first small heads but about half what i should have gotten. So in general don’t feel bad about the garden it was a hard year.
That photo is from early in the summer when you could still see the structure of my new arbor. It is very simple locus posts with locus poles just screwed to them with deck screws. I used baler twine for the string to grow beans and cucumbers on it worked really wrll for the beans ok for the cucumbers but they needed training. The idea is i can cut the strings and compost all of it together. I found this a big improvement over bush beans as we get alot of mildew problems with bush beans and got non with the pole beans. Just wanted to share what worked well for me this summer.
15 Likes
That’s good to know Dan. I don’t trust running tractors in general. Fortunately this one is set up for mostly loader work, I shouldn’t have to get on and off while running. The selectospeed is nice for a loader going quickly reverse to fowards vs shifting gears constantly.
Just out of curiosity, when it starts to move is it powered, or just freewheeling? If powered, which direction does it want to go? I’ll read up on it a bit, see what folks say and if there’s an adjustment to check on.
9 Likes
The transmission never disengaged the first gear clutch band is the problem so it will creep forward in first gear under power. But the band is about half engaged so it takes probably half a minute or more before it stops slipping on the band and drives the transmission. There is a process for setting the bands and the release pressures. I don’t know the full procedure just that it involves hooking up several pressures guages to the transmission and monitoring pressure in more than one location at the same time as you adjust the valves. As near as i can remember you are setting flow divider valves and monitoring both sides of the split. But it was over a decade ago i was exposed to those tractors.
Iirc that transmission has a serries of bands like brake bands that squeeze down to engage the gears.
6 Likes
Chris, Those selectospeeds can start in gear, any gear so be careful. It might be in park but before you can get it shut down you have backed thru the barn wall. I worked for a guy that bought a lot of those up and would send me to winch them up on a trailer and take home. Lots of farmers thought they had the best of the deal. He would take those home and had a guy that would pull the transmission and repair them. Most had a few snapped “o” rings and that let the fluid in the wrong places. I probably watched 40 or 50 of those being repaired. Carl bought the tractors for $200 to 600 and would get them fixed and add a brush hog and sell for $2500 to 3500. By the way they will pull slow and steady out of a mud hole better that a manual transmission.
11 Likes
Electric burial is done. Labor Day weekend I rented a mini-excavator and did a bunch of work, dug this 150 foot trench and installed some culverts for the new driveway.
My in-laws came to visit for the week, and helped out with all the projects. F-I-L and B-I-L in the first picture.
Laid down 3" and 2" SCH80 conduit, the larger is for electric and the smaller for cable internet (and my future use). Covered it all up and the electric co. came out to set a new pole (the old one was pretty bad):
They told me I had 10 days to get an electrical inspection. $90 and a few days later, we’re all official:
With the overhead lines gone, it not only looks much nicer, but I can bring larger / taller equipment back here with no fear of snagging power lines. This was step #0 of the house build, not really part of it but definitely a prerequisite. All told, doing the work myself, I have about $2500 in this part of it.
Next up, the driveway.
23 Likes
Nice driveway, beautiful country, even at the end of winter.
9 Likes