It seems

my luck is running about the same as always. I took off early last Thursday to mow and made about four rounds and noticed that there was fuel absolutely pouring out of the front fuel filter on the Ferguson. For some reason one of the seals for the new filter failed. I've never had that happen before. Wasn't that big of a problem to fix, but it knocked me out of an hours mowing time. 

A little later I started having problems with the belts spinning in thick grass and remembered that I had forgotten to loosen the tension on the belts last fall and they had probably stretched over the winter. Naturally, I didn't have the right wrench in the toolbox, so I lost another half hour on that. 

Finally got finished in the main field ('cept for about half an acre that is waaaay too wet) and made about a round and a half on the other field when it got dark on me. Not a problem! I had the bright idea that I'd just get up early and mow it before I went to work, so the next morning I got up at 5am and headed to the field. As I was driving down the path to the field, I hit a rut and heard something go "pop" and the next thing I knew, the mower cutterbar was laying across the back wheel. It seems the weld in the main shaft that the mower pivots on* had broken. 

I wasn't able to get a new shaft until today, but I'm close to having the mower back together.

I also had to get one of the neighbors to roll my hay for me, because I'm a moron of course. I started doing some work on the Ford tractor just before hay season, thinking I'd have it back running in a day or so. Nope! It's been sitting for over a month in many, many pieces and naturally, being the idiot that I am, I parked it right in front of my round baler....

*The mower only pivots when you hit something hard enough to trip the breakaway. This is supposed to keep from damaging the mower, but all it seems to do to my mower is destroy the driveshaft every freaking time it trips. So, naturally of course, I had to do a little redneck engineering on it to keep that from happening.... that of course, will be a forthcoming Redneck Engineering™ post.