the Walnut Diary

I bought the 1989 tractor last spring because it combined a loader, a heated cab, and very small size with a Mitsubishi diesel. It’s a cousin of the engine in my beloved Bolens G174.

The electrical system on the tractor is complex, to say the least. There is a shut-off switch which isolates the battery. Leaving it on will drain the battery overnight, regardless of the position of the key in the ignition switch.

This week’s task came when I finally decided that its battery was toast. I had never looked at the thing before because it lay underneath a large, cylindrical air cleaner sitting horizontally on the battery. All I had done was reach in to remove and replace cables. But the new ground made no difference. The battery had to go.

But that was a bit of a problem. The hood tips forward, but not very far, before striking the loader frame. I couldn’t find any way to remove the hood. The air cleaner came free quite easily with an ingenious arrangement of buckles, hinges, and such. In removing it I realized that all that stood between the air cleaner’s metal housing and a dead short on the positive pole of the battery was the rubber insulator on the terminal. So I removed the cables, set them out of the way, and reached in to lift out the battery by its convenient handle. Uhh…. I couldn’t get two hands into the space, I’d need to lift straight up at least two feet to clear the radiator (already showing scars from previous misadventures), and I simply didn’t have the strength to raise it from this awkward position with one hand.

Considerable fussing went into a strategy to lift the overly-tall and very heavy battery. The trick would be to get it out with neither damage to the radiator nor injury to my skeleton. Slipping batteries are murder on backs. Several hours of frustration ensued without success. Night came, and in the morning the strategy was clear to me. I would attach the chain hoist to the overhead bar of the car hoist and lift the offending, acidic lump out.

But first I had to retrieve the chain hoist from another task, where it was stretching the wall of the old garage back into square. I had needed to make the north corner of the west wall lose its southward lean of about 1 1/2″ if I was ever to install an overhead garage door between the two ends. After a few false starts I had cut two round pieces of stout 3/4″ scrap steel from a broken pickle fork (for removing ball joints). I drilled a hole at the south end of the wall into the top plate to mount one bolt. I drilled another into the bottom plate at the other end of the wall. A pair of chains shortened the diagonal to where the twelve foot reach of the chain block could tighten things up. Again, there were some false steps in this process, but once I got the chain block installed and I figured out how to operate a vertically-oriented implement on a steep slope, it produced rather astonishing results. Hundred-year-old nails in clapboards and chestnut studs were no match for the implacable pressure of the chain. Before long the wall was again square (if it ever had been). I hastily screwed boards on the diagonal into the studs and plates to hold the wall in place. Then I left it to sit for a few days.

In a burst of morning energy, I jerked the chain to lower the hook across the diagonal, and the hoist was free for its next task. The wall stayed put, without a whimper.

In the auto shop there is a loop of three strands of 1/2″ rope at the centre of the horizontal bar above the car lift. I use the chain block on it to place and remove the winter cab on one of the tractors, so it is a familiar procedure to hook it on. I carried the hoist into the garage floor in a 5 gallon pail so that its trailing chains don’t get tangled. I placed the 10′ step ladder over the pail and just to the left. I picked up the hook on the top of the hoist and dashed* up the ladder with it, perched at the top with one arm over the bar, and fastened the hook into the three strands of rope, a practiced operation. I now had a sky hook to lift the battery, even though the tractor’s hood might have to flex a bit to let the chain do its work. With the odd metallic groan, up came the deep cycle marine battery. Why would anybody put a trolling motor battery in a tractor to start it? I slid a handy oak board across the arms of the loader and wiggled the load back onto it. That solved the problem.

The replacement battery was an inch lower and about half the weight of the dead one. I simply lowered it into place by hand. The new battery from Feenstra’s started the CaseIH very well, so I drove it out of the garage in triumph and promptly forgot to shut off the main switch when I stopped the engine. The new Interstate still had enough juice to start the engine a day later.

*Dashed may mean different things to different ages.

Yesterday I spent working on the Kioti UTV.  Turns out a slightly open overflow bottle connected to the radiator is not a good thing on a vehicle habitually driven through fields.  The anti-freeze was so black that I couldn’t get a reading on the tester.  I couldn’t even tell if it had been green or red.  A trip to the dealer determined that a gallon of green stuff should be in there, along with some water.  The rest of the day I spent flushing out an amazing collection of hayseeds from the radiator, long hoses to the mid engine, and the engine block itself.  It was more soup than tea.

The compressor failure in the shop nearly short-circuited the whole process because I couldn’t get the wheels off the UTV.  My air driven ratchet is a bit enthusiastic, it seems.  Turned out the whole failure was from a pinhole in the hose next to the tool-using end, but the discovery came after I had torn up everything from the compressor, out.  So now there’s a day of cleanup, getting rid of cardboard boxes and old skis.  New hoses are definitely indicated, both to and from the big reel on the ceiling.  Those fittings are larger than the standard variety, so I’ll need to take one off and measure it carefully before heading off to Princess Auto.

It’s hard to believe how many times that hoist lifted and lowered the UTV to a more convenient position over the course of the day.  How do people work on vehicles without a hoist?  Or maybe the lift is a range extender:  it lets one work a longer day before exhaustion.

By dark, after a fifteen minute drive around the area with water only as coolant, the flow from the hoses under the Kioti was running clear from the front and a weak tea from the engine.  I decided it was time to end this process before a misadventure could leave the machine without protection from an overnight freeze.  So I buttoned up, except for the bolt on the top of the engine, under the seat.  It is a hardware-store 1″ bolt serving as a bleeder valve.  Then with a clean funnel I poured in the green liquid.  It burped occasionally, but I got the whole 3.78 litres down the funnel before a little bit of prestone bubbled out onto the top of the engine, at which point I nervously threaded in the bleeder screw and tightened it.  With the engine still warm from its tour of the farm, I poured in another two litres of water (6.3 litres capacity) before the radiator rebelled and burped messily, so I put the cap on and called it a night.  Still nothing in the offending overflow bottle, but a surprising amount of steam rising from the radiator.  Diesels run hot.

While at Feenstra’s Farm Equipment I whined about the difficulty of securing the Kioti Mechron’s air cleaner due to its fastening mechanism. Rob suddenly turned and headed for the shop. “I have one out here.” I followed. Rob demonstrated how tricky it is to fasten the clasps in a tight space. “The thing is to take the whole unit out, assemble it on the bench, and then put it back in. Two hose clips and two 12 mm nuts, and the job is done.” I tried that before starting on the radiator. It worked exactly as he had said it would. A mechanic is much more inclined to solve a problem by removing additional parts than an owner dealing with an unfamiliar machine, but he provided the input I needed to solve a nagging problem.

On a passing note (an immediate update seems inappropriate): In the middle of the flushing fracas yesterday afternoon I heard this godawful noise which sounded like a failing hydraulic pump, but loudly. I looked over to a woodpile my neighbour Bill was loading aboard his truck with my TAFE tractor. I strolled over, noting that the tractor’s engine was off. Bill pointed far up into the sky, where a whirling flock of very large birds kited on the strong breeze, yelling their heads off. “They’re cranes, and from the sound of them I’d say whooping cranes.”

I had never hear a sound like this before, and from so far above that the large birds showed as dots. I had to agree that “whooping” would be a good description for it. I texted another neighbour who is the resident bird watcher. He responded that it’s that flock of fifty sandhill cranes currently spending their days in Patterson’s field, a half-mile south of the shop.

Once the federal Liberals finally got rid of Stephen Harper I decided that my political contributions were no longer needed so I looked for other worthy destinations for a few do-gooder dollars. The Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail looked as though they could use some support. These subscriptions have continued for some years with the Globe‘s dollar-a-day levy occupying my time with its nifty crosswords and a neat back door into the news via the top stories running beside the puzzle. The Star has faded in my attention as its fees have crept up. Why I’ll probably cancel it soon is an issue of convenience, though. It seems whenever I log in to read an article, pop-ups asking me to subscribe disturb the experience, and its algorithm seems incapable of realizing that I am already logged in on the platform.

As a NationalNewswatch.com subscriber I tend to cherry-pick the authors I like to read. John Ivison’s articles drew me to reconsider the National Post. So I subscribed to the conservative paper, as well. It is cheap and far more polite to an online subscriber than the Star.

A bit over a year ago two of my favourite NP voices, Jenn Gerson and Matt Gurney began The Line which at length invited $50 for the annual subscription. Consistent with the principle of funding useful mental activity with my political contributions, I sent Jenn and Matt my money and have enjoyed reading their intelligent and balanced news analysis ever since.

Then Paul Wells, the keystone writer at MacLeans, departed with his tweed jacket smoking after some editorial dust-up involved in turning Canada’s trusted weekly news feed into a decorator magazine. He guested at The Line for an article or two and then made the pitch for a subscription. I clicked the box, received no payment instructions, but began reading his erudite analyses right away. Paul immediately responded to my query, explaining that Substack.com already has my billing information, and so after the first subscription will automatically bill me for subsequent box-clicks without other formality.

I resolved to be careful about random commitments on subscription sites, but concluded that a well-organized subscription department is not to be faulted in the news business. See above comment about the Star.

Of my annual $500 do-good budget the parts I am most likely to continue are The Globe and Mail, The Line, Paul Wells, and the National Post.

I was driving the Kioti back to the house with an empty trailer attached this evening.  I drove down through the shade of the walnut field behind the barn and to my surprise, a large buck ran across in front of me.  Then he stopped, curious.  I slowed and sat idling.  He inched closer, vaguely threatening, maybe ninety feet away.  I sat and stared. Finally he broke eye contact and started to graze. I headed out.  Once I had “fled” the confrontation without questioning his dominance, he happily ran back to the woods.  His coat is gray and white at this time of year, and he appears surprisingly heavy for young animal.  But I could only see two prongs, though their arc is broad and they almost meet at the top.  There may be other points, but these two are beauties.  My eyesight wasn’t up to the task of examining this critter, even with the new lenses, in failing light.

Neighbours laugh about my UTV sounding like a tractor, and the Kioti Mechron is quite noisy with its 22 hp diesel engine. No doubt this deer is accustomed to tractors and sees no threat in them.

I was glad to get a look at this magnificent animal, but he has been causing me a good deal of grief in the garden this summer. That may not be fair. A doe has appeared on my game camera on a couple of occasions right around time my little apple trees received yet another pruning. And the poor little cherry tree couldn’t keep a leaf until I bought a roll of snow fence and built a half-dozen rounds anchored by steel posts to protect my young trees. I know he wouldn’t have antlers in May, but this guy is a lot heavier than that ballerina which waited eight minutes by the camera’s clock after I had finished watering the garden before she made her appearance.

I won’t get revenge through a doe tag in this county, though a buck tag is easy to obtain. In my few attempts at deer hunting over the last fifty-five years I have discovered that they don’t exactly volunteer for freezer duty. Maybe it’s time to try again, if only to defend the apple crops of the next decade.

My wife is definitely not keen on this.

I found this on Tractor By Net.com, most likely posted in about 2012. Diabetes and the aging out of a generation of grad students at Queen’s have put an end to sugar season at the farm, and I miss it.

Saturday’s visitors were a hoot. Dr. Xu Han, a young woman who has just completed her Phd. in biology, brought along her 11-month-old son, Larry (named after the St. Lawrence River) and her mother, Donghua Li. Her husband R.J. had to run the family shop. Anyway, Xu’s mother had just arrived from Bejing to take her turn at raising Larry upon the return to China of Xu’s mother-in-law. Donghua spoke no English, but we faced a happy barrage of Cantonese whether or not her daughter was within earshot to translate.

Donghua loves the air in Ontario, which she pronounced clean and good for her grandson. On her tour of the workshop she had to know the function of each of my many full-sized woodworking tools. Smart and self-confident, she had no trouble understanding what each did, and was particularly intrigued by how I used my shaper to make beveled panels in the house. She took a long look around the interior of our house (a 5 year renovation job) and voiced her approval to her daughter of my skills as a husband.

To Donghua maple sap tasted good, like cane juice, but the syrup was too sweet. She tasted it, grimaced, and promptly added water to make it more palatable.

As nearly as I could tell none of the three had ever touched a dog. Our resident English springer gradually grew on them, though the mothers were very worried when she barked a greeting that she would harm Larry. Larry decided that he liked this strange creature, even when she took his cookie and brushed his face with her tail.

Two years ago my first encounter with Xu and R.J. was again at sugar making. Xu was fascinated with the block splitter mounted on my tractor. She spit every block she could find around the sugar arch, even raiding the woodpile in my shop for more victims. But the fun really started when she asked if she could learn how to use an axe.

I have a crummy, plastic-handled model, so I showed it to her. All of the sudden R.J. jumped into the game, as well. They kept us in stitches learning how to split small blocks. What they lacked in skill they more than made up for in enthusiasm. My son’s friends still talk about that afternoon.

In four years Xu and R.J. have learned English and prospered through superhuman effort and a great attitude. They bring a lot to the table.

Is it true that a grey squirrel is more territorial and will run red squirrels out of their area even to the point of chewing their nuts off?Rod Croskery, Rod has owned a lifetime of English springer spaniels.Answered Oct 22, 2020

Quite the opposite, from my observation over a few decades: in Eastern Ontario the red squirrels are so fast and aggressive that the greys avoid them, even allowing their smaller rivals possession of choice walnut trees, rather than confronting them.

Because the reds do not plant walnuts (broadcast hoarding) the way the greys do, and because the reds insist upon turning our attic into a larder for walnuts, I kill them off with my shotgun until the greys can resume their scatter-hoarding around our farm.75 viewsView 2 upvotesAnswer requested by Randy Steele22
Add CommentRod Croskery · June 12, 2021

Over the last year during a bumper nut crop I learned to raid the red squirrels’ caches of walnuts — substantial piles of green nuts heaped on the forest floor — overflowing from their usual log or den caches. My neighbour and I simply shovelled the nuts into the back of my Kioti Mechron and hauled them out to distribute to other land owners for planting to replace ash trees lost to the borers. Two hauls of four five-gallon pails full went to other woodlots, but I also enlisted the grays in other parts of the woodlot to plant some of the surplus nuts. I just left the pails of nuts on the ground and returned for the empty pails the next day.

Another update is in order. 6 January, 2022

Over a two-week period last fall I wanted the squirrels to plant walnuts over a ten-acre section of our woodlot after an improvement cut to remove diseased American beech trees which made up 40% of the tree population. My first effort involved dumping a five gallon pail of nuts next to a game camera to report the activity. A single red squirrel carried every nut fifty feet to a large maple, and up the same track to a hole halfway up the trunk. This went on from an hour before daylight until every nut was gone. The red tried to kill a Grey squirrel who ventured in for a nut.

Plan B: Kill the red squirrel. I went into Elmer Fudd mode and made a fool of myself for an hour before realizing that the vanished squirrel had been lying on a branch, silently watching me for the whole time I scanned the large tree.

Plan C: Spread nuts where that squirrel isn’t. I put the game camera to work again along our driveway. The first day a cache of nuts was ignored by three Greys, a gray and two blacks, which lived in an adjacent tree. On the second day the camera recorded many feints and quick runs by the nuts with much nervous tail twitching. Eventually the gray mother squirrel picked one up, examined it, but then dropped it and ran away. One of the black daughters was a little braver, and dashed in, grabbed a nut and retreated to a limb of the tree above. Eventually all three began to steal nuts from “the trap” and retreat to the tree with the nuts with hulls still intact. This was no better than the red squirrel’s headlong effort. I reset the camera to watch the trunk of the tree. The following day I have film of one of the black squirrels descending the tree with a hulled nut in her mouth. Then she tentatively made her way down a trail away from the tree. She went out of the camera view after a couple of hundred feet, but I observed her planting a nut (not necessarily the same one) near a fence row at the far end of our lawn 500 feet from the tree.I set up a feeding station for these three Greys where I could watch them from the breakfast table in the house. The gray lady is my favourite. She overthinks everything. A nut planted is not necessarily going to stay there. One day I watched her replant a nut two more times in different locations until she was apparently satisfied with its location.My take-away from the distribution of at least a dozen pails of nuts over a two week period: Grey squirrels will plant nuts. They work slowly, but with great deliberation and dedication. Red squirrels and chipmunks destroy walnuts by burying them too deeply in dens or packing them together in places where they can’t grow.

Plan D: I started distributing nuts in piles of about a dozen at a time, in many locations around the road in the woodlot. I drove my UTV on the route several times a day as I checked the many caches, looking for partial depletion as an indicator that the Greys were at work. If the nuts were all gone, I eliminated that site as a candidate for more nuts, assuming that a red or a chipmunk had found it. This seemed to work, but the Greys get tired easily. In some cases a couple of dozen nuts moved out right away, but then the cache was ignored for weeks.

My sources for the abundant walnuts were unharvested sections of road through the woodlot where no squirrels visited, for some reason. I used a nut wizard to roll the nuts into five gallon pails with amazing efficiency. Alternatively I raided a red squirrel nut cache where I filled five pails with a shovel in just a couple of minutes. This left a hole about the size of a bathtub in a gap between two rotting elm logs. There were still lots of nuts in the cache.

If you Google Rod Croskery on YouTube, the video For The Love of Black Walnuts will likely pop up. With over 800 hits so far, it is doing a lot better than my film on motorizing the rotation of the chute on my snow blower which has 32.

Update, 8:01 a.m., 6 Jan, ’22

Over my granola this morning I watched the Grey Lady deal with a cache of walnuts I had left in the feeding station four days ago. They have sat untouched through a balmy day yesterday, but today in 25 degrees F she decided to visit. While the red squirrel mentioned in this lengthy tome repeated the same activity at least fifty times in plundering a pailful of nuts on camera, this Grey is a true lateral thinker. I watched while she buried a nut in the snow on the other side of the pump, then returned rapidly for another, which she buried in the snow behind a parked truck. Next candidate went up to the very top of a small sugar maple, where she found a crotch where she jammed it securely. Next nut went out of sight into a tall cedar tree, but then I saw her coming down from the top of another young sugar maple, without a nut. And so it goes. From what I know of this lady, these initial placements will be revised over the coming days. Some may be fed to her nest mates, the two black-mutation offspring who nest with her. The Grey lady’s urgency makes sense to me now. I just looked out to see a red squirrel bouncing around all over the place. The walnuts have already been put away safely. In this case, the early Grey got the nuts.

The latest protocol for infection control at Rosebridge Manor required enhanced mask protection and eye shields for essential visitors, most likely to protect patients and staff from outside contamination.  After my rapid test, the guy at the door gave me a pair of vinyl goggles without vents. I discovered there are two layers of film which must be removed if one wishes to see, even badly. How do nurses and PSWs  read while wearing these things?  He did warn me not to run into anything.  

The other component was a version of the treasured N-95 mask.  It is unimpressive at first view:  just a little strip of material and a couple of elastic bands.  On closer examination one finds it surprisingly solid and heavy, with a substantial metal nose frame, but also a membrane between the eyes and the metal clasp, as well as contouring for a tight fit over the chin aided by the two elastic bands, one over the back of the head and the other around the neck.  The fit and general quality of the mask are impressive, notwithstanding the two rows of ordinary staples pegging the elastic bands in place.

Breathing through the N-95 is an entirely different matter than wearing a blue surgical mask.  I couldn’t stand the air deprivation for more than an hour.  It would take much better lungs than mine to deliver a lecture — or even take part in a conversation — while wearing one of these barriers.  

Trying to read a book or computer screen while wearing goggles, bifocals and an N-95 just boggles the mind. 

Is the N-95 an effective barrier against airborne virus threats? It is certainly better at sealing off extraneous air supplies than a blue surgical mask, which remains a reasonable protection for others if one is prone to sudden sneezes. For a short time in an environment where the risk of viral infection is high and one must enter, the N-95 seems a good idea, though avoiding the situation entirely remains by far the better plan.

I promised the guy on the door that I would take good care of the mask and goggles, and bring them along for my next visit so as not to waste any PPE kit.

In today’s Toronto Star there’s a debate among contributors about whether Ontario voters would benefit from the next provincial vote run according to the principles of ranked ballots. I tried to post the following comment but they were no longer accepting input.

So here it is:

Did ranked ballots make the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party any better? Had Tania Granic Allen not switched her social conservative votes to support Doug Ford, Christine Elliot would be the Premier today. Nobody can reasonably state that Ford’s immediate dumping of Granic Allen was a legitimate move, even though the rules of ranked ballots allowed it. This deprived Ontario of the services of a reasonable, intelligent leader going into the pandemic. Instead we got Homer Simpson.