#4 – First Things
March 22, 2022
“I was intending to, but I never got around to it; I had to do all the First Things.” I can still hear the capital letters in the small sweet voice of my grandmother, our Nana, describing her day on the farm. In my teens and early 20's, I spent some part of 7 summers (3 complete ones) living with my grandparents and working on the farm. In those years, we had cattle on the farm and a huge garden in the top west field. I learned many things from Nana and Grandad, but the short path through the labyrinth was not among them.
Tuesday Log - March 22
8:00am: get a burning permit (Wednesday was forecast for rain, so Tuesday afternoon looked promising); do a little research on tractor timing/carb tuning
Drive to shop and OB basement: load kerosene jugs, hard garbage, recycling into the truck
Take rental chainsaw-return to Jefferson City
C&L Tractor Supply, Dandridge-get carb rebuild kit; fuel screen, starter switch
Fuel supplier - get 5 gallons of kerosene
Get back to Carol’s by 10:45am for JAMEY AND STEVEN'S WEDDING (online)…11:30
Plan was to burn the brush pile at 1:30pm, but at 1:00 the wind came up, too dramatically for comfort (was NOT in the available forecasts), and I spent the rest of the day VERY grateful that I hadn’t started the fire.
Afternoon/Evening jobs:
- Stain posts on handrails in front of the old house (after replacing one of the posts yesterday)
- Hand brush cutter: a few spots on the lower bank
- Tractor: replace distributor rotor and cap; remove and rebuild carburetor (one barrel, updraft); essentially just a 3D puzzle, with some really well-hidden and tiny parts. It took the rest of the day’s light to finish; I only had to improvise one tool. Most tedious is cleaning some of the small passages of 70 years of the gummy varnish that had built up.
