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Found my first one of the season this morning, walking in gathering maple sap.

Mange is a highly contagious skin disease caused by parasitic mites that burrow into the skin and cause inflammation. It is primarily found in mammals, including dogs, cats, foxes, and raccoons The sarcoptic mange is noteworthy because of the fact that it is a zoonotic disease which can easily be passed on to humans. So don't be handling any dead mangy critters.

The last bunch of days have shown me the best snow removal system with more predicted to keep the snow gone. It doesn't cost anything and it is all done by the same guy that put it there. Come-on spring!

I went out and purchased another piece of equipment for snow removal and also for gardening. I found a really nice used Kubota B7500 at a really good price, it is equipped with a snowblower and a belly mower. I had one of these Kubotas and sold it when I purchased my TYM, a big mistake on my part so I remedied it. I still have my three point 4 ft Kubota tiller that works great with this tractor. Al

I’m hoping we get some warmer weather on the weekends, so I can comfortably work out on the barn on my broken down antique Ford and Farmall tractors. Too darn cold again today and tomorrow looks to be worse. I just fetched another bucket full of firewood from the woodshed up to the house with my John Deere loader tractor. I’m hoping to get at least one of those two antique tractors running, so I won’t have to do all of my planting work, with the John Deere. I especially like the old Ford 8n for plowing, because it has hydraulic “draft position”, which the JD lacks. That makes it much easier to maintain uniform plow depth. A nice thing about plowing with the 4wd JD though, is that the mud holes don’t even slow it down. It will easily pull that little 2x12” moldboard plow thru standing water. My low lying farm sometimes takes a as long time to dry out in the spring. The JD also has great hydraulic power on the loader, and that has always been able to pull or push me out when I get too deep in the mud for it’s loaded R1 tires. The old 2wd Ford 8n also has a little more ground clearance, so I liked that better for cultivating sweetcorn. It’s been pulling my 3 point cultivator crooked, since I leaked all the calcium out of one rear tire, so now I mostly use the Deere for that also. I always use the Deere cultivating my rr fieldcorn, because I run a 12 volt sprayer with it (the Ford is still 6 volt). I apply roundup to the rows at the same time I’m cultivating with that. The 2 sprayer nozzles are up on the loader frame.

My father in law had a big on the back of his 125 hp cabbed 2 wd tractor, back when he lived in WNY. He must not have cared for it too much because now that he’s moved up to the NW corner of the Adirondack park, and takes care of the snow removal for the roads and about 25 residences, around a little lake up there, he gets by with a big hydraulic adjustable v-plow on an open station 65 hp 4wd tractor. That plow mounts in place of the loader bucket on the loader frame and is controlled with the bucket control levers and maybe one additional remote cylinder. I think it’s about 9 ft wife when straight, and tilts to ether side or forward or backward facing V. I also gave him my old 3/4 ton 4wd Chevy pickup, which he fixed up and mounted a plow on. He used that the first 2 years up there, but has been using the open tractor more the last 3 or 4 years. He may be wishing for a blower and the cabbed tractor now, with all the snow the have been getting this year, but I haven’t heard. They are a little north of the usual Lake Ontario snow belt, so maybe it’s not been too bad, where they are. The first year up there, the drifting was always horrible across the road on the north end of the lake, which runs north-south. The next few years, I helped him put a snow fence across the beach on that end, which helped a lot but was also a lot of work (mostly for me driving the posts). The last few years, we have laid out a bunch of floating docks across that end, after pulling them out of the water in the fall, with his tractor. They work almost as well as the snow fence and no extra work required. How nice it is to not need to drive all those damn snow fence posts with the pile-driver when I’m up there on my annual October early ML huntcation. I also used a back blade on my 8n for the first few years at our house. I was a lot younger then and it didn’t bother my neck that much. It does a little more now but it’s a lot faster with the bigger blade on the back of my larger 4wd tractor. I do prefer plowing the lighter snows with the front blade on my old Farmall Cub. Too bad it, and that old Ford are both broken down right now. It’s a real challenge keeping those two brand of tractors running. Owning them certainly has given me appreciation for always having at least one John Deere available, for getting the real work done. I’ve never had too much trouble with the bucket loading up with snow on my John Deere 4120 loader tractor. It usually all shakes out pretty good when I dump it. I just finished moving two mountains of it from the ends of our driveways in fact. That bucket holds about 1/2 face cord of firewood, which I hauled up to the house from the woodshed after I finished moving the snow. There was hardly any snow stuck in there, after a couple hours spent moving it. It also works good for moving butcher waste back to my coyote/crow bait carcass pile: