Well, 2007 is upon us, and it gave me time to reflect.

The last thing done in December (and 2006) was moving a old homemade stove into our shop. Dad made this stove when we were living up in Lillooet (And when I was still a "little pup") And from what I see, it is like the nuclear reactor in our basement.

Thinking about it, 2006 was a very good year for us. We were able to clean up the place, get our very first (At least for me!) hay crop off, and get a very good start at rebuilding the farm. In fact, comparing it to when we first moved in, in June 2005, when we were practically camping here, the quality of living has improved a lot.

2007 could be, however, the last year Mad Cat will run. I was thinking about all the trouble we were having with the blade up at the intake, and the trouble we are having at repairing the blade. The cat is worn out, and a hand crank is not really desirable. So what me and dad agreed on is Hornet, who is undergoing restoration, will get a new, designed-to-fit, built-to-spec blade on it, with electric start and a geared-down transmission (Gear machining, here we come!), and Mad Cat will be either parked or turned into a ag-cat until we get the time to restore it as well.

Planning the future of this farm has really got me eager to start, but have to wait for the snow to melt! A "Monster Shop" is planned for construction this year, I'm gonna build a tractor shed for all of our running equipment, and we will expand our fields! I am looking forward to this!

Well, we had a lot of fun playing in the dirt!

Since we don't want a repeat of last winter of the water intake, and our Uncle, a expert machine operator, was visiting, we began the assault up to the creek with our D7 bulldozer and backhoe.

By the time my Uncle left, we got a brand new dirt road pioneered in, so it is now a little surprising that we can drive right up the road, which was before barely accessible by quad, right to the box with our trucks!

The D7 did pay a bit of a price for all that work: one of the Idler frame shafts broke, and both brakes started begging for adjustment. I limped it back home to the shop, and brought up our almost equally as worn out 1937 Cat Twenty two (Whom I call Mad Cat), about 15,000 pounds lighter than the D7.

Despite the change in size, Mad Cat is perfect for burying the exposed pipe leading down the hill. We got the first 200 feet of pipe covered, and we will work our way back down the mountain until it is all covered.

Perhaps the biggest change to come would be to the intake system itself. The dam-to-overflow box was barley adequate for irrigating our fields so dad is going to have a excavator come in, rip out the system, and set up a infiltration system; a series of intake pipes under a layer of drain rock, all under a large pool, in the middle of the creek.

Heh. I'll like being able to "pressure wash" in the shower while the field is being irrigated!

Project Hornet (1936 Twenty two) has slowed down a lot with the re-introduction of school. The governer is reassembled, but that's it. I am currently polishing up the Magneto for Installation. Once that's done, I'll work on the rest of the engine.

I know I'm not a kid, but how do you say "One week from DOOM!! DOOM I SAY!"?

I go back to college on the start of September, so it's back to the routine of getting up at six, traveling one hour to Cranbrook, then spending the rest of the day learning my brains out.

but it also means another thing. Winter is coming. We were almost completely unprepared last winter, and as you can read in the past posts, that was quite fun. The only saving grace for us was the fact that we stuffed a new chimney and our big stove into the basement, and kept it running 24/7.

We are currently stocking up on firewood (Due to lack of insulation, we went through half of our wood supply (which is fairly large) in one winter, where in Cranbrook, we would go through a quarter), preparing the machinery (Backhoe and our Cat) and in cleaning up the place in general.

I was expecting to have rebuilt my cat twenty two engine by now, but replacing the bearings on the crank have eluded that dream. It used poured Babbitt bearings, but dad is looking at replacing those with modern bearing shells. Should last a while when we get it together.

Summer's here, but It's the wettest one I remember.

It's been raining off and on quite steady for the last few weeks. It is disrupting my painting of the cat project, and is limiting our projects to indoor ones. Funny though - I'm the only one complaining. The plants love it. Our newly planted hay field is looking greener by the day, and the grass in areas is waist high.

The roof is receiving it's final touches. The chimneys were installed, the last of the soffit was installed and we are starting to work our way down. Things are looking good!

Discing the fields was a snap once we got another tractor on it. I had tried last year to use a 14-foot disk with our Massey Ferguson. Turned out, the 35hp tractor could barley pull it. So this year, we fired up our old D7 and hitched it up to the disk, and angled it full out. With 103 horsepower on top of those tracks, and looking a little out of the ordinary with a 13 foot blade and logging winch, that yellow monster barely even noticed it was pulling something! Two full days with both the D7 and the Massey got the back forty ready to seed.

First on June we got chicks. So, that meant a chicken coop has to be built. The framework is just about done, and my brother is working on it every day.

Right next to our chicken coop, we set up our new potato garden. Mom asked if I could disk it and try out some implements. I hooked up a ditcher from the far end of our field onto out tractor, and dug 6 trenches 40 feet long. After throwing in seven boxes of seed potato's (And still 1 1/4 rows left!) we then hooked up a "Hiller" we got from an auction last fall.

In fifteen minutes, we did a job that would have taken us close to a full day if we did it by hand. I think I like mechanization!

Now that everything is dried out it's time to start some field work!

Last fall, I plowed up and disced part of a field with our '59 Massey Ferguson 202 tractor and single-bottom plow. We left it for the winter, so now I'm using our disk harrow to break up the grass that sprung up. when I am done, we are going to plant some grass for hay.

I still have to clean up a bit of the plowing left from last fall and long-forgotten furrows from the previous owners, but one things for sure- I am NOT going near the far end of the field, at least for now. the mountains are still giving off thaw water, and that water is running all the way down to that corner of the field. That is turning the area into a mud bog that is barely transversable by foot, much less machinery...

I had been working on one of our non-running cats, a 1936 Caterpillar Twenty Two. It had not been running for a while (Even before we got it) so the engine was a little stiff. I was getting some pops out of it before I set the project aside for Final exams.

After finals, I hooked our running twenty-two up to it and towed it over to our shop. I had made a attachment for a large drill to crank it over, but that was shelved once I found out the engine was stuck. I pulled the cylinder head, and had Dad whack a piston with a block of wood and a sledgehammer while I stood on the hand crank. We finally persuaded the engine to move again after five minutes of whacking the pistons. I soaked the pistons and cylinders in oil, and proceeded to throw the engine back together.

after reassembling the motor, I gave it a whirl. It hit off and ran like a clock!

I'm going to have to change the oil and fix up the radiator (It leaks like a sieve) But we should have another cat in the family by the summer!