Yellow Snow In The Wild West

I had to remove the alternator from the Versatile tractor last week in near cold weather (9 below one day and 3 below the next.) The tractor was outside and no windbreak in sight. It took six and a half hours in two days to perform a task that normally could be done in 20 minutes.  See, the bottom bolt was so rusted in that nothing could move it.

Finally after using a full can of Sea Foam Deep Creep Rust Buster and working the bolt back and forth, forth and back, a sixteenth of an inch at a time I got it to move. But then when I had pounded it out until it hit the mounting bracket I couldn't get a punch on it to hammer it the rest of the way out. It finally gave up and I won. I took it to Glasgow, 55 miles away and had Ben test it. It was good!! Nothing wrong with it!!

That was all well and good because I had eliminated one of the problems that could have caused the tractor to not start. So I put the alternator back on and started taking out the batteries.

This tractor has two and each weigh close to 80 pounds. I got three of the battery cables off and, of course, the fourth wouldn't budge. Again a 30 minute chore turned into a 3 hour war. It was warmer that day though. About 10 above and a nice 25 mph breeze wafting lazily in from the north.

Finally after much grunting, heaving, sweating and swearing I got them removed and loaded up into my pickup. I took them to our shop 24 miles away, charged 'em up, tested them and found they were good to go!!

Next I started to take out the starter and have it tested but found that most of the trouble was caused by a frayed cable in the frame where no one could see it. I taped the thing up, cleaned and Vaselined the terminals and bolted it back together. Problem solved.

My next problem came a couple days later when a very cold and frigid Alberta Clipper came through Hinsdale one evening. It dropped the temp so cold it blew the bottom out of the thermometer.

It was so cold that I put a pot of boiling water on the porch and it froze so quickly the ice was still warm.

I knew this day was going to be “special” when I drove out to check the cows  I saw that maybe 25 of them were standing stock still not moving a hair while the others were moving around grazing, butts to the wind.  Upon further inspection I found the reason. 

As the weather dropped to waaay below ugly, when the cows lifted their tails to pee instead of puddling up, the yellow liquid started building up, up, up and before the cow finished the column had build up so high it froze to where it came from freezing the cow to the ground. And every time after that when they had to “go” the column just got heavier and thicker.

There they stood, with their tail frozen into this yellow spire of cowpee, which was connected on one end to the cow's end and the other end frozen to the ground.

Now some folks will say cows are abysmally stupid, but as I watched the herd I saw that the other unstuck cows were taking notice of the dilemma their friends and relatives were in and when they had to relieve themselves they did it at a fast trot going into the wind! Does that change your mind about “stupid cows” or what?

It was a college educated thing they did. Otherwise we would have had 200 cowies froze solid to terra firma. Yikes.

My other dilemma was that I couldn't simply take a sledge hammer and break the column into yellow ice cubes freeing the cows because I might break their tails and then how could they swat these pesky snow mosquitoes that were hovering all around them?

So all I could do was to take a bucket of water and a flake of hay every day to these poor misbegotten creatures and wait until either their tails or the weather broke.  The 43 degrees the other day did the trick and they are all free and not much worse for the wear.

And such is life out here in the Wild, Wild West.

That's it for now folks. Thanks for listening.