Here’s my photo journal for April 2012. Sorry I’m a bit late–with the days getting longer it’s harder to find time to do stuff like this (but easier to find time to take photos). What’s neat about this month is you get to see the change in landscape as the snow leaves and the valley starts to green up.
I’m a little late at posting my photos for March. Better late then never!
This is a video I took of the sunset that we had on March 24, 2012. The view is from Weber Lane looking towards Black Mountain and the North East mountains of Star Valley.
Black Mountain Sunset
Here’s a video that was taken up at the calves. This video is similar to the previous post, except it has more of the calves and shows the tractor stationary.
Our beef cattle calf in the spring, and we feed them during the summer on the range, so our beef is only Alfalfa and grass/range fed (organic).
I took a nice little stroll to the beef cows that are currently on the dry farm on the 1939 John Deere Model A. I’ve been working on the tractor most of the winter, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to warm the motor up a bit and let it stretch its legs. It was so pretty that I decided to film it. Since I’m just holding my camera, it’s a little bumpy. The video shows the beautiful west hills in Freedom, Wyoming (which is actually in Idaho) on the Robert Weber farm.
Driving around the 1939 John Deere A after doing some work on it throughout the winter. We replaced the radiator core, muffler, and rebuilt carburator. This is the same tractor that I made the time lapse video reassembly of. It’s amazing how much work you end up doing any time you decide to tear down into one of these things. You go to fix one thing, and find that there are two more things that need to fix.
Photo Journal for February of 2012. 29 Days, 29 photos.
Since we had Monday off for Presidents Day, I took the opportunity to go on a quick ride up Deer Creek. The snow was pretty nice and it is close enough to home that it allowed the dogs to come and have a good time too. The video here shows me on my 2008 800 Polaris Dragon with a 163 track. The snow has been a little late coming this year, but the past few storms have seemed to be an attempt to make up for it.
1939 Model A Radiator Muffler Replacement how-to. This video shows the installation of the radiator, muffler, air stack, and re-assembly of the tractor. As a note–I should have filled the radiator after I re-attached the hoses on the cooling system. I had a leak in one of the hoses, and having the hood off would have made it much easier to adjust. Know that I am not a professional, and you may do things differently or in a different order. I only provided this video for people like myself, as this video would have made it easier for me back when I knew nothing about how to get the hood off and work on the tractor. Click “read more” for more information.
John Deere BW Muffler Replacement Preview–incomplete. This is a section of a video I’m putting together of a muffler replacement on a 1949 John Deere Model B. It’s the first time I’ve had this hood off, so I ran into a few snags. I’ll have to finish it another day. When I do, I’ll make up a better video with commentary of how to get the hood off to replace a muffler. Unfortunately Deere made something that should be very simple far too complicated. Keep a close eye out for my pup–he makes a few quick appearances.
Here’s a little time lapse video I made on my way to work one morning. It starts off in Freedom and ends at Afton, going through Thayne and Grover.
And here is a video of my drive home from work.
Here are my photos from the 2012 Thayne Wyoming Snow Days. If you’d like to check out the video that I compiled at the event, please do so by going here. Snow Days is a fun filled day of various snowmobile family-oriented activities. If you desire to contact me you can do so by sending an email to kylew01 or use the comments field at the bottom of the post. If you are not seeing the photos, please click “Read More” to see the remainder of this post.
Here’s a video that summarizes the events from the 2012 Thayne Snow Days, held on February 4th, 2012 at Thayne Wyoming. If you’re looking for photos, keep checking this site as I will post them within the next few days.
Today we had the 2012 Thayne Snow Days in Thayne, Wyoming. It’s a Star Valley community event where people come and do such things as drag races and children sled races. Here’s a clip of a video I took that shown someone getting dumped off the back of their sled (snowmobile).
This year I’ve decided to once again do a photo journal. However, unlike previous attempts, I am only going to take one photo a day, and upload the entire month as a single post, instead of a post every day. These photos are just that–a journal. They are not meant to be glamourous or overly beautiful. They are meant to show aspects of my day. Every day.
It’s hard to believe that we are coming up on one year since we burned down the “Old House”. This house was on our farm from about 1914 to March 16th, 2011. The home was built by my grat-grandfather Lawrence Weber and his siblings for their mother, my great-great grandmother Verena Weber, whom was born in Switzerland and came and settled as an LDS immigrant. She lived in the house for only 2-3 years before she died (according to the information I have received). I suppose it was about that time that Lawrence Weber took over what is currently the Weber Farm, where he ended up raising his family and living until his death in January of 1949. My grandfather, Rex, lived in this house until marrying my grandmother and building their own home, which was built next to this house.
This house was a very beautiful building in its time. It had some lavishing woodwork on the outer trim and other parts of the exterior. I’d even go as far as to say that it was one of the most beautiful homes in the valley at the time it was built. Unfortunately though, it fell into disrepair as it became a storage place for old car junk and other items. After this started happening it became clear that no one was ever going to fix it up, and in the past few years it had started to become a dangerous place to be around.
After the house finished burning down, it left some interesting traces of how it was constructed. It was built on a rock foundation, which was capped in the early 40s. It also had two brick chimneys and one cinderblock chimney, which I believe was added later when they made the edition to the kitchen. We have since collected all of the bricks and rocks.
Although this video and photos probably doesn’t seem very interesting to random people, to those that have a connection to it (especially us that still live on the farm), watching it burn was a very emotional time and experience. If the video seems a little overly dramatic for you, I apologize. I tried to capture it how it felt to us.
Fall Creek Falls in Swan Valley, Idaho.
These are some photos I took and a video that I compiled while shooting at Fall Creek Falls in Swan Valley, Idaho. Swan Valley is next to Star Valley, which borders it on the North Side of our valley. It’s a very pretty waterfall that few people know about. It is very easy to get to, and is well worth your time to drive over and take a look. I’ll provide a google map showing the location of the waterfall.
Earlier I posted a video that shown how the grain (barley) was harvested. This video shows how we unload the grain from the dump trucks and put it into the grain bins.
Sorry about the site downtime today. Apparently my ISP, Silver Star Communications, had an issue where they bumped off all of their DSL customers until they rebooted their modems. Since I was at work I was not able to do this until I got home. Hopefully it won’t happen again anytime soon!
Earlier last fall I learned that someone in the valley has a very nice 1929 John Deere model D. The D was the first tractor that John Deere produced under the “John Deere” name (the Waterloo Boy was officially the first, which John Deere purchased to jump start their tractor line). Here is a picture of myself and a friend driving it in action. It was a fun tractor to drive, though compared to my Model A it was akin to driving a tank…