Great article on homemade walk behind plow

[macmex]

I won't be doing this any time soon, but surely do appreciate this person's ingenuity! The made themselves a walk behind, wheel plow for use with miniature donkeys!

Anarchy Acres Walking Plow for Miniature Donkeys

[hmoosek]

I have a walk behind planter my Uncle restored in the mid 90’s. It needs new handles now, but I keep a 5 gallon bucket turned over it and it keeps the spinner turning freely. It needs painted again too. I doubt I’ll ever get around to it though. I ought to take it and have it powder coated I guess.

[heavyhitterokra]

That plow won't hurt those donkeys any, they were born to pull a load and are so strong for their size that it's really hard for us humans to comprehend. I used to have a pair of burrows here. One was 34" inches at the shoulder, the other was 32" inches at the shoulder. (each Less than 3' feet tall) and stubborn as two little mules.

One day, I went to catch them to bring them to the barn to be saddled for some kids to ride; being stubborn as they were, I was not able to lead them to the barn, nor was I able to pull them or persuade them, so I decided to walk home and get my '61 Ford pickup truck. When I returned with the truck, I caught the two little burrows again and tied them both to the back bumper, thinking, "This will pull them, no problem."

I made it maybe 50 yards before encountering a long downward slope, where I let the truck idle at the lowest speed possible. I had one foot covering the brake, just in case the weight of the truck rolling downhill might cause them to trot.  I was concerned they might try to jump the tailgate and get hurt if they ever broke into a run and I had to slow down for some reason.  To my great surprise, the little burrows, having decided that they had had enough, both set their feet at the same time; killing the truck's V8 engine in the process.

Can you imagine how much strength it must have taken to kill the engine in a V8 truck as heavy as a '61 Ford F-100 while rolling down a hill with no load?

Draft animals are incredibly strong and incredibly resilient.  They are amazing creatures.

[macmex]

LOL!

In the family lore of my wife's father there is the story of an incredibly foolish, accident prone great uncle. Among other misadventures they tell of the time he had a hay wagon loaded and was ready to pull it with his mules, who refused to budge. He whipped and cussed them, all to no avail. Finally, he decided he'd MAKE THEM MOVE. He piled some brush right behind their tails (remember now, they were hitched to the wagon) and lit it on fire. The mules promptly moved forward four or five feet and STOPPED. Nothing he could do could convince them to move. The fire consumed the wagon and hay.

[hmoosek]

That’s some funny stories!!!!



One of my Uncles (by marriage) not that it matters, I loved them all equally. Anyway, he was smart in some ways, but sometimes he’d do stuff that made you scratch your head. He had a beautiful Chevy truck. It was an early 70’s model. The cows needed worming, but he didn’t really have a way to corral and control them. I’m about 12 years old and as usual, he tells me his plan.

“See boy, we’re going to build us a make shift shoot and I’ll back the truck up to the exit. I’ll run the cows in 1 at a time, you stick the caulk gun in their mouth and give them about three pumps, then move the truck to let them out, while I get another one.”
I’m not sure exactly how many cows he had, but guessing around 20. Everything was going as planned till he brought in a big bull he called Apollo. I stuck that caulking gun in his mouth and he went berserk! He jumped into the back of the truck, over the cab and down the hood. It darned near killed the bull and it destroyed the truck.


A few years later he decided to quit using square bales and start using round. “He said, It’ll be easier on us, boy.” Famous last words. Oh, did I mention he didn’t have a hay buggy or any method of moving the hay from the field. He had a bright idea involving a pick up truck (same one by the way) a hay hook, a rope and a pallet. I took the pallet to the hay bale as instructed, Then took the rope and tied one end to the hook and one to the hitch of the truck. He backed the truck up to the pallet, I took the hook and rope up and across the hay bale. He pulled forward and the plan was to roll the hay bale up on the pallet, then drag them up by the barn. After a half day of work we managed to move a few without killing ourselves. He did burn out the clutch in the truck and There was one time the hook slipped off the hay and flew over the cab. The sad thing is if he had square baled it, I’d had all the hay in the barn within a day. Never did get all the hay out the field that year, but he did break down and buy a hay buggy.

[heavyhitterokra]

Kind of sounds like some of Dad's shenanigans. We were lucky to live through some of them. When I was a kid, he bought a rundown 40-acre farm, along with 17 head of cattle, with no corral and no barn to store hay. We stacked hay inside an old chicken house built to keep 100 brooding hens. The door was barely wide enough to squeeze a square bale through. After we tore out all the nesting boxes, it held 1,500 bales, stacked to the rafters.

The first summer there, flies got really bad and Dad decided we needed to spray the cows, so he built a blind made of old pallets onto the side of a lean-to loafing shed that was barely attached to the side of a milking shed. It was a three-sided affair with an open end, where he parked an old '53 Ford tractor. The tractor had a pump attached to the PTO shaft. One end of the pump led to a 55-gallon barrel full of Cooper-Tox. The other end had been attached to a short length of fire hose.

Dad's plan was to drive the cattle into the lean-to loafing shed, pull some old bed springs and things across the opening, and spray the cattle down with the Cooper-Tox.

That plan might have worked on the milk cows, but Dad had read somewhere that Brahma bulls were better hustlers on poor pasture than Herford cattle and had recently purchased one to that effect. When Dad fired up the pump and began spraying cows, the bull went ballistic and destroyed the entire loafing shed. When he was done, nothing remained but the collapsed roof and a cloud of dust ... The flies didn't even seem to mind.

[hmoosek]

I’m enjoying this thread!!!

[woodeye]

Don't know if you all have ever read MAD magazine, but these stories would fit in seamlessly...Love it!!

[macmex]

LOL! I never read MAD Magazine but I can still remember the picture of the guy they used when advertising! 

[woodeye]

It has been ages since I looked at one of the Mad magazines, but I think the guy you refer to is Alfred P. Newman, or close to that anyway. I didn't internet fact check myself, that was just a guess. It was back in the early 60's when I was still a pup, but I can remember that Mad magazine was always the first one I'd peruse. My allowance didn't allow for purchase of the magazine, but it didn't matter really because the grocery store employees never told me that I had to buy it to read it. That was back when full size candy bars were a nickel, or 6 for a quarter.

While I'm on the subject of price increases, I was looking at a website the other day that gives the value of a dollar for whatever year you choose. The reason I was curious about it is that when I was a teenager we had a vegetable stand. We sold all the okra we could pick for 25¢ a lb. So I wanted to know how much I could expect to sell a lb. of okra now in 2022. That 25¢ is now $1.90. Yikes!!

Monetary Inflation is scary stuff...

www.inflationtool.com/

[heavyhitterokra]

They've been getting between $4.00 and $5.00 per pound for it here at the Tahlequah Farmers' Market. I never sold mine higher than $2.50 per pound though. Reasor's grocery store used to buy it from me wholesale at $1.50 to $1.75 per pound, one hundred pounds per delivery. We delivered there once per week. It used to make my son mad to see that they had marked it up to over $4.00 per pound before we even left the store. I've seen them sell my okra for as high as $5.10 per pound. That was several years ago. I haven't sold to Reasor's since they changed hands somewhere around 2015 or so. It's probably higher than that by now?

[woodeye]

Yeah, I bet it is higher now. It's insane to think about markups like that grocery store did. I don't blame your son, it would irritate me too to see them mark it up 175%. Even allowing them 30% for operating costs, they still made 145% profit. Not acceptable.

My little sister found some at a produce stand in Del City last week for $2.99. I guess she thought that she had stolen it because they ate that and she went back a few days later and bought some more. If I was to ever want to sell okra here again, I wouldn't have to deliver it because the traffic on highway 177 is probably 50 fold, or more, of what it was when we had the stand back in the 60's and 70's. I can remember back then just sitting down there at the stand wishing for a car to come by. Nowadays I have to wait for several minutes, just to cross the highway to get my mail. And then I get trapped and have to wait some more so I can cross the road again...