Durnik at Work

It's been a week of learning and change with respect to our tractor.

Thanks to our good friend, Steve, time was spent changing oil, etc on the Ford 8n and it gave me the excuse to look more closely at the machine and to get familiar with it.  Manuals have been ordered and are still 'in transit.'  But, a great deal of progress has been made nonetheless.  Perhaps the most interesting thing would be the discovery that this tractor is NOT exactly a Ford 8n.  It is a Ford 8.5n.  The chassis is clearly a 9n and the engine is a 1948 8n.  We can speculate all we want about how this came about - but, it doesn't matter to me so long as the tractor helps us do our work.

With the help of the superhero Band Saw Man (thank you Jeff!), we now have a subsoiler that works with a category 1 three point hitch.  Ok, if you don't know what that means - suffice it to say - it works with the tractor.  And, since Jeff is also very good working with metal, he was able to do the repairs to the discovered subsoiler so that it functional.

I was able to get the implement out of the truck and onto the tractor today.  Sorry, no picture of that yet.  And, of course, I had to try it out.  Aside from the normal 'getting used to the tool' issues, it appears to work very well with the tractor.  I've long since learned that no tool is the 'silver bullet' and every tool needs a learning curve to find its optimal use patterns.  So, most of one of our plots (E1) has had the subsoiler run through it.  I had other work to do, so had to stop playing....er.... learning how to use the tool.

This was the second job assigned to the tractor on the farm.  The first was helping us to move the Duck N Cover out to a different field for the meat chickens.  That mission was also accomplished.

Also accomplished - a name for the tractor.  It has been dubbed 'Durnik.'  Again, we thank Steve for the insight.  If you have read any of the David Eddings fantasy books, you will appreciate the name selection.  If you have not, you'll just have to take our word for it.  The name describes exactly what we hope to get out of the tractor.  Solid, reliable and efficient work.