Snow? November? Who knew?

I know from long experience that the local school board often enough has "snow days" in October.

But why is that first snowfall always such a shock, even when it happens at the end of November?

I have two snow-blowers on the premises. And a few shovels.

The ancient walk-behind was sitting in front of the garage most of the summer. When I say "ancient" I mean its metal panels are fashioned from what has got to be at least 16 gauge steel. She's one heavy old  beast. But I have to replace one of the back wheels, and fine-tune the belts.

This old girl is big on belts. There's got to be about three or four of them in there under the cowling.

And I've been meaning to look in there all summer, but there's always so much on the to-do list...

Then there is the snow-blower I attach to the back of the Ford 4000. While the Ford has a forward PTO the snow-blower doesn't have the mounting hardware, so whenever I use this rig I have to be in back-up mode.

You do this a few times at 6 in the morning in the middle of a blizzard, and suddenly those Las Vegas real estate ads look a whole lot more appealing.

And it's way easier to get your hands on a Glock down there.

But I think I could get life in prison for that quarter pound of weed that's stashed in the rafters of the garden shed.

Think I'll stay put.

But winter is a bitch.

Gun lessons at Falling Downs

Never point a gun at a person.

That's the first lesson in gun safety. Unless you intend to shoot them.

I remember a few years ago I was giving Junior the walk through on the latest Glock in my collection (which I don't have any more, in case any of my readers at various law enforcement agencies are wondering) and as we were wrapping up I said don't mention this to your school chums because I don't have all the paper work quite in order just yet.

So Junior says, don't worry, I assume everything around here is illegal so I never tell anybody anything.

And that was before we had the still! Ya have to love a kid like that!

This comes to mind because I was taking a few target shots at the old Allis-Chalmers today. It's really pissed me off. Fired her up this morning meaning to head back into the field where I'd carved a breach into the old stone fence a few weeks ago. Did a rather poor job of it. Figured I'd clean things up a bit.

Get into the corner field and whoops, if the fucker don't sink right down to the axles. Damn! And I just went through that field a few weeks ago!

Spring has sprung and the frost is out of the ground. That eight ton back-hoe can't go where it used to.

I'm trying to lever my way out of the field. That's the beauty of hydraulics. Made it all the way back to the road. Then there was nothing to grab onto to pull myself out. I mean I could have clawed into the road, but then the township guys would be all over me. No point drawing unnecessary attention to oneself.

So Allis is sitting in the mud waiting for things to dry out a little. Could take weeks.

In the meantime I've been using it for target practice. I can hit it from the front porch.

Bullet holes add character to farm machinery.