Helping Tom Fix His Potato Harvester and Burning Out My Smoker

Monday August 13, 2018 Guerneville CA.

Fixing my brother’s potato harvester

I was rounding up the tools and supplies I needed for the jobs I planned to do today.

But before I could get to work on them, my brother Tom came by and needed some help with his potato harvester. It seems he backed up when he shouldn’t have and bent the drive shaft that runs it and now couldn’t get the bent shaft off the harvester to repair it.

Here’s Tom working on it.

Potato harvester

This is the potato harvester. It hooks on the back of his tractor and pulls the potatoes out of the ground and and shakes the dirt off them and puts them back on the ground to pick up.

I got my big hammer and helped him remove it.

Here’s part of the bent shaft.

We got the part off and then tried to fix it in his shop but needed the tools over in my shop so we went over there to work on it.

Tom’s shop

Tom in his shop, slightly cleaner than my shop.

This shaft was bent, but there was enough of it to cut it shorter and reattach it to the U joint which took a bit of doing.

Got er fixed

It took some time but we kept working on it and we got it fixed. He went over to try it out and came back whistling so all was well.

I needed a break after that. All the supervising wore me out. :O)

Burning out the smoker

I rounded up the parts for my smoker and hooked up the gas as I wanted to burn it out to clean it up a bit. I took it up to 450 degrees F. for about an hour to burn out all the old grease. It still needs some minor repairs.

The smoker is the one with smoke coming out. The other little stove is to burn wood instead of gas to smoke, but isn’t hooked up yet. I’m also watering my mulberry tree.

The fuse block job

One of the things I wanted to do today was change the fuse block on my old Toyota Land Cruiser. I got it off to this point but I didn’t get it done today as naps got in the way.

Corrosion

I’m replacing the old glass fuse block with a new modern spade type as the old one kept getting bad connections as a lot of it is corroded from being so old.

Pole beans need to be picked

Just before dark I went out in the garden and picked these pole beans which I need to get cooked for dinner.

Checked on the chickens

I checked on my chickens. Here the oldest ones are settling in for the night. They are two months old today.

Here’s a couple of the smaller ones about two weeks old. One is on top of the other getting warm for the night. Most of the other ones are inside the box where these guys will likely join them soon.

Working in the right direction

I didn’t get done with all the things I had planned to do today, but at least I did get some stuff done and some stuff ready to get done.

Nice day.