Snow, cold, and broken machinery!

We woke up to a beautiful winter day.  The boys and I spent all morning and a lot of the afternoon outside in it.

We were at our friends' house - they have a pony, goats, and chickens, which all the kids loved! - and Kris got a call from home that the wheel loader wasn't working.

At home, they tried to fix it, to no avail.  It seems like something electrical.  And of course you can't call anyone to fix it at 6:30 p.m. on a Sunday.  (Well, he did call, but they didn't answer.)

This is the machine we use to take the feed from the feed pile and put it into the mixer.  Since it wasn't working, they had to take the tip bucket off and put it on the skid steer.  It's supposed to fit both.  But unlike Legos, it never really transfers super easily, so it took a lot of time and tools.  Legos, where are you in the ag equipment market?!

Kris offered to feed tomorrow morning, because even though it isn't his day, he didn't want anyone else to have to mess around with it.

So ... tomorrow at 4:00 a.m., it's supposed to be 1 degree.  Instead of being in a warm, closed cab wheel loader, Kris will be in an open cab skid steer ... which means it's going to be a COLD job!

Kris said he was going to wear all of his clothing that he has.  I fished out a ski mask-type cover from the depths of our coat closet and suggested he wear it tomorrow.  It's a little different - it has little holes for breathing in the mouth area, and it sort of resembles a hockey mask.

He stood in the bathroom, pulled it on, and we both looked at him in the mirror.  He looked terrifying.  It was a scene right out of a horror movie.

"This should help me keep warm," Kris said in a muffled voice.  He leaned close to me and whispered, "I'm going to get you."

Let's hope that wheel loader gets fixed quickly, or he's going to scare the children.


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Fixes

This morning when I woke up Kris was gone - way earlier than he normally goes.  I texted him to see what was wrong.  Nothing!  I'd forgotten that the mechanic was coming to work on the wheel loader today and Kris wanted to use it to feed the cattle before he got here.  A planned early morning is always better than a rushed get-out-of-the-house-something-is-wrong early morning.

It's a hydraulic leak.  Now, I'm sure you're thinking - wasn't there a hydraulic leak in the wheel loader before?  If so - CONGRATS!  You have a great memory.  (If anyone remembered, it'd be our former co-workers at Caterpillar, since it's a Cat wheel loader.)  And the answer?  Yes.  It's the same leak.  The mechanic thought he fixed it before, but it didn't work. 

The heifers got into the wrong field again, but we were able to fix that ourselves!  The heifers kept going back into the woods, but then when they wanted to go back to the feeder, they couldn't figure out that there was a jog in the fence.  They would see cattle where they wanted to go, so they would just go straight through the fence to get there.  After this happened a few times, Kris decided he would stop trying to train them, and just move the fence posts so there was no jog.  I guess it's possible to teach a young heifer new tricks, but it's far simpler to just move the fence posts to accommodate their travel paths. 

We've had a fairly strange week here - a pig farmer accidentally destroyed my toe by sitting on it with his metal stool, my baby niece had a seizure while we were caring for her and we called 911, my sister had a retinal migraine which made her lose sight in one eye and really scared her, the engineering firm working on our lagoon dissolved ... but the good news is, everyone and everything is okay! 

Let's hope the fixes next week are as easy as moving fence posts.