[mitchmaine]

carl, you said that very well, crystal clear, and i agree totally.
once you choose your hat it’s up to you how well you wear it.
i’ve known lots of loggers, horses and machines, and some loogers with machinery were wizards. doing good clean jobs and making a living, too. it’s not about the horse, he’s just a tool that you can choose to use well or not.
we used to have state foresters working on salary who would come and mark your woodlot for you. that program ended in the 70’s and they went into private practice. it was amazing how their marking changed when they were working on shares. even though i think they were all good foresters, how you make your money effects us all.

[mitchmaine]

jen, great photos. i remember reno from unity. good horse.

[mitchmaine]

hey george, any sap running over there yet? we hung a few hundred first of the week, then got rained out weds. thurs. 6″ rain. friday was nice but the brook was up so we couldn’t get in. penny and i forded the crossing this morning and there is about 300 gallons 2% sap in there but nothing running. tuesday it was 31 degrees, the last freeze. we have had three weeks of high 30’s weather tho’. and frost coming out of the woodsroads. hard on the horses. if i ever get my hands on that groundhog…….

[mitchmaine]

hey rick, probably you know that in a stand of nothing but sp/fir the minute you cut two, the rest start blowing over. a tough tree to thin. our forester never even marked the fir, or the popple either. there was an understanding that you could cut as much as you wished. fir was paying $100/cd. roadside a few years ago and my neighbor just got $1300 for a truckload of popple groundwood. but the markets fill up fast with shears and grapple skidders so its hard to count on anything for long.

[mitchmaine]

thanks mark, i’m pretty much a senior everything nowadays. ha! anyway, i checked that cam, and they are identical on all three spreaders, so i either have or don’t have what you need. i couldn’t see it too well in your photo, so i’ll try and get a measurement for you. as the wheel turns the cam rolls along your three legged part and pushes a wedge over the top of a notched bull gear, advansing your bed chain, right?

[mitchmaine]

hey mark, i know i have one of what you are looking for. it’s on my old spreader that i’m keeping for parts for the better one. but i have another spreader way out back, same vintage, that was parts for the parts spreader once. forgot i had it til pen reminded me of it. i’ll look and see. it’s a tough part to retrieve. you may have to take the whole thing. talk to you later. mitch

[mitchmaine]

i think your expert is right. ordinarilly, a bucket tap has a six week life till it heals over. tubing seems to get another couple weeks. with buckets, if you want to be sugaring til mid april, you wait to tap 1st of march. hard to believe we will still be sugaring in april the way the weather is now. we will all be wiser in two months, but for now, guessin’s the best we can do. our expert told us that that we always get a syrup season, one way or another, rain or shine. hope he’s right.

[mitchmaine]

grey, what if you took a router and carved in your name or your farm name into the beam? might look sharp.

[mitchmaine]

all rain here, carl. haven’t got a guage out but must be a coupleinches judging by the puddles. we hung about 300 sap buckets first of the week and sap was running, but now we can’t get to them cause the brook is up. snow’s gone and frost is coming out of the ground. some sugar year. may get colder, we still have lots of time, but my spirits are low.

[mitchmaine]

jim, try just a set of beta lines. not to expensive, and you’ll get the idea. you get better purchase with the beta. i use bio harness for the wear and you can hose them down right on the horses, but use leather bridals and lines cause of the feel. leather is great if you can afford it. leather harness on leather horses, right? they must know the difference.

[mitchmaine]

what if you added a pair of caster wheels behind the seeders making your seeder a four wheel rig. keep it very light steel, just enough to sling or lift the seeders up into it and off the ground?

[mitchmaine]

“pretty is as pretty does” i think. sometimes you just like or get along with one horse better than another. i don’t think it’s always gender driven. i do think there is a huge difference between mares and geldings, but each have pros and cons and when you get by, it’s a horse, any sex, that you choose, and usually for another reason. my current “cutie” is an old mare i twitch with. she has taught many colts to work. she has one habit, she likes to see me while i’m chopping. she spins around and watches. i tied her off for a while but she’d rub and fidget and get all worked up, so now i let her watch and things are fine. women, don’t they always get their way?

[mitchmaine]

my apologies too, erica. didn’t mean to get so far from the thread. i know leon and joe wengard pretty well and i own a lot of their stuff, and i also wish they or someone like them could survive up here. but the truth is even tho there are alot of us here on this site, a fabricator would most likely starve up here, in maine anyway, selling horse farm implements. they are right where they belong and we have to go there. makes going all the better.

[mitchmaine]

john, you got me thinking about turning the wrong way. if you took a truck rearend, wheel, rims and all, and dropped the driveshaft and got it free of the vehicle, the yoke would be spinning left. but if you spun the axle over it would reverse the turn to clockwise and be right for a tailshaft. it’s already reduced in the chuck, but you would need a clutch. maybe just a spline coupling or something. and you’d have a ground drive. you could even take a small tractor with a pto and use its rearend. put the pto in gear, throw the clutch, and use the tranny for whichever speed you would like??? possibilities.

[mitchmaine]

hi geoff, all it is is a 20 tooth srocket on the pitman shaft to a 50 tooth sprocket on the tailshaft. i could unbolt the drive and lay it on the floor easily. the whole thing is made up together and just bolts on to the three pole bolts. also remember that sheild is pretty important with long tailed horses. also had to cut and weld the seatpost so i could swing left. i’ll see about another photo.

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