Tag: Freedom Wy

  • Blade work with the 2010 and 435

    Blade work with the 2010 and 435

    I never passing up an excuse to drive the tractors on a beautiful fall day, I used the opportunity to do some blade and box scraper work to fill in the pivot tracks. Though not a necessary task, it makes working up the ground in the springtime much smoother and is better on the equipment.

    I used the John Deere 2010 Utility to fill in the tracks with an Allis Chalmers three-point blade, and I then used the John Deere 435 (2-53 Detroit Diesel) to finish it with a box scraper. Looking back, I should have used drag harrows and will do that next time instead. It tended to clump up some, so I’ll know how to do it better next year.

  • 2017 Old Iron Calendar

    John Deere 2017 CalendarOver the past few years, I’ve had several requests to create a calendar featuring some of my tractor and nature photography. Well, I finally built up the ambition to go and print/create such calendar. I’m introducing the 2017 Old Iron calendar, featuring some of my tractor photos taken throughout different times of the year. I only have John Deere tractors, so the calendar is mostly John Deere (with one exception in December). Please visit the following link to view/order a calendar. Thank you very much!!

    Click here to view and order the calendar online

  • Heaven Above the Fog

    Falltime is here, and the change of seasons is in full swing. We’ve had a lot of rain lately, and evening rain storms bring with them foggy mornings.

    This videos shows the drone going up and over my grandparents farm in Star Valley, Wyoming. The video shows the Idaho side of the valley.

    Filmed with a DJI Phantom 4.

  • John Deere A Pulling Straw Wagon

    This is a video of my restored 1947 John Deere A pulling a wagon loaded with 3×3 straw bales (1/2 ton alfalfa sized).  Although we have newer and more appropriate tractors for such a task, it is fun to see the A that I worked so hard on over the past year doing some real work.  Not to mention that it sounds good too!  I can’t begin to describe how much work, time, and effort has gone into getting it where it is now.  Even though she isn’t painted nor the most pretty tractor, it is much further ahead then I thought it would be at this point.  When I pulled it out from its resting place (where it had been as long as I can remember) a year ago I told myself that I would work on it ‘a little here, and a little there’ and that it would take about ten years to complete.  I never would have imagined that I would have it to the point where it is currently at only a year later.  The list of things that were wrong with it include a locked-up motor, seized up brakes, rotted rims, missing carburator, no front tires, rotted/leaking water return pipe, rotten/gone mag, rusted valves, completely-filled with debris cooling system (hadn’t had a cap on the radiator in years), and on and on!  It also had a mouse nest in one of the cylinders!  It had been sitting out for as long as I can remember–so when I brought it home I looked at it and asked myself, “what have I done getting myself into such a project!”.  Needless to say, now that it is starting to bear some fruit from my labors, it makes it all worth it.  Plus it’s been fun, too!

     

  • JD 4230 with 945 MoCo Swathing Alfalfa Video + Timelapse

    This is a video of me swathing (windrowing) a small alfalfa field next to my parent’s place.  I love seeing old footage and videos on our farm–which not much exists of.  So, I try to record this type of stuff because maybe some day someone will find it as interesting as I do.

    The video is of a John Deere 4230 pulling a John Deere MoCo 945 pull-type rotary windrower.

    To create the video, I used two cameras, my cell phone (located on the top of the barn, doing the time-lapse), and a GoPro mounted onto the tractor and swather.  I used three mounts on the swather–one on the back of the cab, one on the front-right of the swather, and one on the back of the swather.  I didn’t point the camera down far enough when it was on the back to get anything that was really useful, so I didn’t use much of that video.  I tried to show time-lapse and footage that show roughly the same thing.  It’s not the greatest video in the world, but I thought it was pretty impressive for a first attempt.

     

  • A Day On The A

    Having spent so much time restoring the John Deere A, I tried to use it for a few little tasks around the farm.  Here’s a video of it harrowing a pasture and hauling some half ton alfalfa bales. Also included is a few photos of the restoration process.

  • April 2012 Photo Journal

    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.

  • March 2012 SV Sunset

    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

  • Drive to the beef cattle on a 39 John Deere A

    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.

     

     

  • 1939 John Deere A Winter Drive

    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.

     

     

    1939 John Deere A Winter Sunset