I didn't mow everything I wanted to, but I did mow more than I intended to.

Doesn't make sense does it?

The weather forcast originally called for rain Monday, but they've since bumped that to Sunday. I wanted to cut all of the big field (it's about a quarter mile wide and nearly a mile long), but I ended up mowing about a third of it. I also mowed about three or four acres for TC and seven acres for TH. TC called me this morning and told me that he'd went down to the big field and tedded (fluffed) it for me, which is a good thing because my tedder is broke... again. Bigger brother put it back together while I was raking last week, he either didn't put loctite on the bolts or he didn't tighten them down enough. Either way, it fell apart on me in the field. I've got new bolts, but I've not had time to put everything back together.

The 285 ran GREAT. The new radiator seems to have completely cured it's overheating problem (no leaks either). Everything ran fine until about 8:30 last night; I turned a corner, moving slightly uphill and the tractor just died. Boom. No runna no morra. Called TC (love this telephone tractor repair consulting bidness) and he diagnosed it (correctly) as fuel filters. I was skeptical, because in the past it has always lost power when the filters would get clogged up.

I was mowing at TH's at the time, he's the neighbor with the little tractor place down the road, so he just went over to his shop and got two filters and a toolbox (I haven't put mine back on the 285 yet) and we changed them in the field. TC was correct, because the old filters were completely stopped up with a combination of rust and mud.

It was after dark when we finally got everything operationally again. I did have a bad moment when the tractor started rolling backwards (towards the creek twenty-five feet away) while I was putting the grill back on. TC called me FG (see Farming while drunk, December 10, 2003) because of that.

And yes, my parking brake IS broken, I can't believe you had to ask.

I finished mowing that field in the dark. Evidently the alternator is not putting out because my lights kept getting dimmer and dimmer until I finally shut them off and mowed by moonlight.

I'm scared to think what that looks like in the daylight. It probably looks like FG mowed it while he was half lit.