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Its been a while since I wrote a new blog, what with the disruption of retirement and the house move.


Well the first month of retirement is taking a bit of getting used to, its a different routine with no cattle to worry about, in fact this week if we still had cattle we would have had to go through  a second 60 day TB test.
That is a worry that would turn most folks hair gray, not knowing how many cattle will go down as you wait the three days before the test is read.You scour through looking at the growing lumps on the neck on the morning of the vets visit, but until the lumps are measured and the relationship in size between the top lump and the lower one are compared with the chart the vet works from to decide if it is a pass or a fail and in some cases an inconclusive.

The hedge cutting has been going on well, being up to date on the schedule with work in front of me, the only hiccup now is that the rear wheel hub on my tractor has started leaking oil.
I have no doubt that over the years of work it has had to contend with all sorts of rubbish and wire and string  in particular get wound round the bearing and oil seal and eventually gives way and now needs replacing. Its quite a big job the bell housing has got to come off and stripped down to enable a new seal to be installed.

We are still sifting through sorting and burning up things that needed a second look at, as when downsizing like we have, most of the surplus stuff has got to go. To sell if there is a demand or market for it, or to dispose of  to the charity shops, who do a good job of recycling useable goods to folk in need, and the rest to the scrap yard if its iron.

And yes my workshop will not fit our new situation either, there are tools and spanners that came with the different implements when new, old plough spanners, tractor spanners, wheel spanners, and  a set of wheel hub spanners.
Now these wheel hub spanners are by far the oldest I have got, by wheel hubs I mean the wooden wheels that are found on the old farm carts and for that matter on wagons on the wagon trains we see on the old films opening up the USA new frontiers. We have a number of the old brass wheel hub caps about with the name of the makers embossed into the casting, these are polished and on the front room fire surround shelf.
There are five different sizes of these ring hub spanners tied together, I bought them from the wheelwrights sale when he retired thirty five years ago. It just happens that I now live in the wheelwrights house, so these hub cap spanners will have to stay. He would be using them on a regular basis when all the local carts and wagon would be taken to him and his father before him for repair.   These spanners could be upwards of a hundred and fifty to two hundred years old.

This is an old Ransomes  5 in one Plough spanner that came with the big Ransomes Hexatrac plough that I pulled with the County Crawler tractor  

See the outfit here    http://yewsfarm.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/to-refurbish-old-ransomes-plough.html    (Copy and paste this link) 

This is a Bamlet horse drawn mowing machine seat, the mower has long since been sent for scrap, surprising what turns up when these old scrap rucks are turned over.

This is a beam hook that used to be in the old dairy in the house on which the pig would be hung to be gutted and halved and left to set for a week before cutting up

We must beat the iron while it is hot, but we may polish it at leisure.
John Dryden (1631 - 1700)