Afghan AccouBRRRRRRRPPPBRRPP
Apr. 26th, 2026 06:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickAnother afghan square, a full two dozen completed. (We need 42 squares.) Also I got a free bulldozer ride this weekend. Nice.
Friday: tagged trees with brother the elder, ran a tank of gas through the splitter, got some poles from Dad to stack wood on (because I'm out of poles at my house).
Saturday: split wood for another tank of fuel, stacked wood, set a pile of brush on fire in the rain, met with Waylie to arrange for tagged trees to be cut down and, in one case, up. Watched the Cinderella season of Bridgerton. (Look, I like Bridgerton. It's fine. No notes. Amor vincit omnia and all that shit. I am perfectly happy watching Bridgerton. But the latest season with Benedict is 100% Cinderella. Like that's it. That is 100% the plot.) Knitted. Spun. This is where the afghan square got finished.
Sunday: I moved hay for the boys, fixed Finn's feed tub so that it's harder for him to flip out of the tire it sits down in, prepped for Sunday dinner (potato-leek soup, using up what I think were the last leeks from the Great Free Leek Event of 2022 -- the date was on the bag in sharpie, is how I know -- plus I made beautiful sour cherry hand pies using up some of the summer's sour cherries) and I was in the middle of pastry when brother the elder called for a spot of Interrupting Bulldozer.
He'd been working on the trees that he'd had Waylie drop, dragging them (in sections) out of the woods with the bucket loader (this is a cub cadet "estate tractor", not a full size farm tractor), but we'd had some rain on Saturday and it's spring here and a lot of the landscape is squishy this time of year, so the bucket loader decided it was very happy where it was sitting and not inclined to move out of its wallow.
The bucket loader has 4WD. However, the landscape in these parts can be squishy enough to overpower 4WD even if your heart is pure and your intentions are focused.
If you ever get one machinery stuck, the answer is generally to get another, bigger machinery to pull the first machinery free. It's a very There was an old woman who swallowed a fly style of thing. Now, freeing a stuck machinery is very much a two person affair, one to drive the pulling machinery and one to drive the stuck machinery, so if you've fucked things up this much, you have to involve another human in your fuckery, even if it kind of sucks to have to do that. (Nobody likes to have to call for help with stuck machinery, so don't be a huge dick if you get that call. Some day you might need to call for help with stuck machinery, too. It could happen.)
When brother-the-elder called me to come save him, I was up to my elbows in cherry hand pies for Sunday dinner, so I gave him a rain check until after yoga/dinner. We eat early, so there was going to be plenty of daylight available for the whole... business of firing up the (elderly) dozer and unsticking the bucket loader and so forth.
After dinner (delightful, potato leek soup should not be so fucking good for how damn low-effort it is) I called brother-the-elder and made arrangements to scout the problem (eyes-on-site is the best plan before firing up any machinery). It was a bulldozer problem, for real, so I fired up the dozer (trickle charger for the win, it started RIGHT UP) and headed down to the problem.
Step 1: drag out first tree log.
Step 2: drag out second tree log.
(These were the tree logs that brother-the-elder was trying to drag out with the tractor. If I didn't drag them out, he'd be back trying to do that and possibly sticking the tractor again. Might as well sort that out first.)
Step 3: Pick up remaining log (to free pinched chainsaw -- it was a day of shit going wrong for brother the elder), then push upper half of log out of way after it breaks (it was almost cut through when it pinched).
Step 4: Pull lower half of log away from the bucket loader's Underground Railroad* so that the way was clear.
Step 5: Remove all other obstacles from the Underground Railroad.
Step 6: Carefully back dozer in to front of bucket loader, chain bucket loader to dozer using The Big Chain. Fire up bucket loader, make sure bucket is up, backhoe is up, backhoe feet are up, 4wd is engaged, bucket loader driver is ready. And then... release the kraken! (very gently take the slack out of the chain and let the dozer start to pull, observing tracks super closely for spinning).
Et voila, all better. Bucket loader pulled right out of the wallow, dozer didn't spin at all, no worries. It went great. Everybody back on solid ground, so I unhooked the chains, drove dozer home and parked it, brother the elder put bucket loader away, etc.
That doesn't sound very release the kraken!. Kind of lame, really. No excitement at all.
Look, the dozer is a 1972 500c IH crawler tractor with 6 way blade. We are gentle and kind with the dozer. It does not have replacement parts very much because it's sort of orphaned and they never made very many to start with. It is a right royal pain in the ass to have it worked on and new tracks are completely impossible to get, so we do not beat the dozer around. If you are pulling a thing with the dozer, take up the strain gently and let it relax into the pull. That way, you'll have a dozer to pull things for next time.
*The Underground Railroad is the path to freedom, folks, do try to keep up
Friday: tagged trees with brother the elder, ran a tank of gas through the splitter, got some poles from Dad to stack wood on (because I'm out of poles at my house).
Saturday: split wood for another tank of fuel, stacked wood, set a pile of brush on fire in the rain, met with Waylie to arrange for tagged trees to be cut down and, in one case, up. Watched the Cinderella season of Bridgerton. (Look, I like Bridgerton. It's fine. No notes. Amor vincit omnia and all that shit. I am perfectly happy watching Bridgerton. But the latest season with Benedict is 100% Cinderella. Like that's it. That is 100% the plot.) Knitted. Spun. This is where the afghan square got finished.
Sunday: I moved hay for the boys, fixed Finn's feed tub so that it's harder for him to flip out of the tire it sits down in, prepped for Sunday dinner (potato-leek soup, using up what I think were the last leeks from the Great Free Leek Event of 2022 -- the date was on the bag in sharpie, is how I know -- plus I made beautiful sour cherry hand pies using up some of the summer's sour cherries) and I was in the middle of pastry when brother the elder called for a spot of Interrupting Bulldozer.
He'd been working on the trees that he'd had Waylie drop, dragging them (in sections) out of the woods with the bucket loader (this is a cub cadet "estate tractor", not a full size farm tractor), but we'd had some rain on Saturday and it's spring here and a lot of the landscape is squishy this time of year, so the bucket loader decided it was very happy where it was sitting and not inclined to move out of its wallow.
The bucket loader has 4WD. However, the landscape in these parts can be squishy enough to overpower 4WD even if your heart is pure and your intentions are focused.
If you ever get one machinery stuck, the answer is generally to get another, bigger machinery to pull the first machinery free. It's a very There was an old woman who swallowed a fly style of thing. Now, freeing a stuck machinery is very much a two person affair, one to drive the pulling machinery and one to drive the stuck machinery, so if you've fucked things up this much, you have to involve another human in your fuckery, even if it kind of sucks to have to do that. (Nobody likes to have to call for help with stuck machinery, so don't be a huge dick if you get that call. Some day you might need to call for help with stuck machinery, too. It could happen.)
When brother-the-elder called me to come save him, I was up to my elbows in cherry hand pies for Sunday dinner, so I gave him a rain check until after yoga/dinner. We eat early, so there was going to be plenty of daylight available for the whole... business of firing up the (elderly) dozer and unsticking the bucket loader and so forth.
After dinner (delightful, potato leek soup should not be so fucking good for how damn low-effort it is) I called brother-the-elder and made arrangements to scout the problem (eyes-on-site is the best plan before firing up any machinery). It was a bulldozer problem, for real, so I fired up the dozer (trickle charger for the win, it started RIGHT UP) and headed down to the problem.
Step 1: drag out first tree log.
Step 2: drag out second tree log.
(These were the tree logs that brother-the-elder was trying to drag out with the tractor. If I didn't drag them out, he'd be back trying to do that and possibly sticking the tractor again. Might as well sort that out first.)
Step 3: Pick up remaining log (to free pinched chainsaw -- it was a day of shit going wrong for brother the elder), then push upper half of log out of way after it breaks (it was almost cut through when it pinched).
Step 4: Pull lower half of log away from the bucket loader's Underground Railroad* so that the way was clear.
Step 5: Remove all other obstacles from the Underground Railroad.
Step 6: Carefully back dozer in to front of bucket loader, chain bucket loader to dozer using The Big Chain. Fire up bucket loader, make sure bucket is up, backhoe is up, backhoe feet are up, 4wd is engaged, bucket loader driver is ready. And then... release the kraken! (very gently take the slack out of the chain and let the dozer start to pull, observing tracks super closely for spinning).
Et voila, all better. Bucket loader pulled right out of the wallow, dozer didn't spin at all, no worries. It went great. Everybody back on solid ground, so I unhooked the chains, drove dozer home and parked it, brother the elder put bucket loader away, etc.
That doesn't sound very release the kraken!. Kind of lame, really. No excitement at all.
Look, the dozer is a 1972 500c IH crawler tractor with 6 way blade. We are gentle and kind with the dozer. It does not have replacement parts very much because it's sort of orphaned and they never made very many to start with. It is a right royal pain in the ass to have it worked on and new tracks are completely impossible to get, so we do not beat the dozer around. If you are pulling a thing with the dozer, take up the strain gently and let it relax into the pull. That way, you'll have a dozer to pull things for next time.
*The Underground Railroad is the path to freedom, folks, do try to keep up
no subject
Date: 2026-04-27 01:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-04-27 03:26 am (UTC)According to my mother, my grandfather was twinking around with the new bulldozer and he offered brother-the-elder a ride on the bulldozer, the which brother-the-elder accepted. (Putting toddlers on the lap of people operating construction equipment was a perfectly acceptable thing to do because it was the 1970's.)
I was quite small (If it was the first year of bulldozer, I would have been all of two and a half. More likely it was second year of bulldozer, when I was three and a half.) and stood watching this scene with my mother. As the story goes, at this point I asked my mother why grandpa didn't ask me if I wanted a ride on the bulldozer. Grandpa apparently saw this exchange taking place, throttled the dozer down (it is quite loud) and shouted at my mother What did she say? and my mother yelled back, She asked why you didn't ask her if she wanted a ride on the bulldozer.
Again, according to my mom, this shocked my grandfather into speechlessness for a second but in the end I got offered (and accepted) a ride on the bulldozer too. Again, it was the 1970's and letting small children sit on the laps of people operating heavy equipment was a done thing at that time.
no subject
Date: 2026-04-27 03:18 am (UTC)Yay lots of wood splitting, and yay for not getting the bulldozer stuck on the quest to free the loader.