Fixing the B21 (again)

Our old Kubota B21 is a great workhorse.  Like any machine that is worked hard, it will occasionally need repair.  It died on us a few days ago and Nick traced the problem to a failed fuel cutoff solenoid.  To stop a diesel engine, you interrupt the flow of fuel.  This can also stop a gas engine but usually the electric spark can be interrupted to stop the engine.  There is no electric spark in a diesel so the fuel cutoff is all you got.  On some older machines this was done mechanically with a lever operated valve.  On our tractor they got fancy and used an electrically powered solenoid.  If the solenoid fails, however, there is never any fuel to the engine so it doesn't run.  We bought a new solenoid valve, installed it, and we were back in business at a cost of $135.

This was the culprit.

Back in business moving dirt.

Spotty Amphibian

Kathryn found this salamander and put him in a 5 gallon bucket.  He didn't like being there very much and proceeded immediately to escape.  After a brief photo shoot we let him go in a safe place.  He didn't demand any residuals.

Climbing to freedom.

Where's Super Ted?

A Misty Morning

Early this morning as I emerged from my tent the forest was enveloped in a lovely light fog.

Looking NW from my tent.

Looking SW towards the build site from my tent.

Transience

These small fungi appear in the morning on the mulch path leading to my tent.  By the evening they are gone.

A New Chainsaw

We have had to remove a lot of trees to develop our build-site in the middle of a forest.  We started out with two  rather different chainsaws.  One was a light duty electric unit by Homelite.  The other was a gas-powered unit by Ryobi.  Of those two, I prefer the electric.  It is not as powerful as even a small gas chainsaw, but it is light in weight and very durable.  It can and has cut down a number of fairly large trees (12 inch trunks) and its low mass allows one to use it all day with minimal fatigue.  The biggest disadvantage of an electric chainsaw is the necessity of hauling a generator up into the forest to power it.  It's principle advantage is its reliability.  I've used and abused it, wore out or ruined a number of chains, bent the bar, and it is still going strong.  More power and portability prompted us to buy a gas chain saw by Ryobi.  It has proved to be a severe disappointment, however.  After only a couple of weeks of (intermittent) use, it became hard to start.  It gets ridiculous when you are expending more energy starting the saw than using it to cut wood.  Nick took up the challenge of trying to fix it but after spending many hours on it I decided that we had wasted enough time messing around with it and needed an alternative.  This led us to Woodstock Equipment Co. in Woodstock, Virginia.  They are one of our sources for parts for our Kubota tractor and excavator.  They are also an authorized Stihl dealer.  They fixed us up with a new MS290 Stihl chain saw. It's bigger and heavier than the Ryobi thing it is replacing.  It also costs twice as much and is made in Germany.  We hope it will prove to be dependable.  So far so good.

Our new chain saw along with safety gear for its operation.

Here I am, ready to cut some tree.

The Buildings Arrive

We ordered two 50 by 20 foot metal building kits back in the spring.  They are delivered to the job in pieces on a flatbed truck.  The delivery date was Tuesday, August 23.  We are by no means ready to erect these buildings yet and we pushed back the delivery date as far as we could (The manufacturer was willing to deliver them as early as mid-June.)  but decided to receive them now before the price of the steel went up.  The biggest challenge we faced was getting tons of steel pieces up to our land in the woods. There is no way a 50 foot flatbed semi could come up to our build site, get unloaded, and turn around.  We simply do not have a large enough flat area for such an operation.  Our only recourse was to unload the truck one quarter mile away on Orchard Lane and carry the materials up to our land parcel by parcel using smaller vehicles. We also had to unload the flatbed truck. We rented a huge all-terraine fork lift to unload the truck and used our smaller F450 truck as well as our Kubota B21 tractor outfitted with pallet forks to do this.  On the appointed day the rental company delivered the fork lift around noon.  Three hours later the truck with our building parts arrived.  We immediately got to work unloading so that we could finish before dark.  We got the truck unloaded by 7:00 PM but most of our steel was still sitting alongside Orchard Lane.  Fortunately, Orchard Lane is quite sleepy and the neighbors are understanding and there was no problem leaving it there overnight.  We weren't too worried about anyone taking it since there were few pieces that weighed less than several hundred pounds and many that were in the 1000 pound range so no one was likely to walk off with them.  On Wednesday morning we were still tired and sore from the previous day's efforts and we didn't get around to moving the steel up to our land until the afternoon.  The fork truck and tractor are slow vehicles and it takes quite a while to drive the quarter mile to the build site so this was all a time consuming process.  Also, some of the steel pieces were as long as 27 feet and could not be carried to our land on the fork trucks since the dirt track to the build site is not that wide.  These long (and heavy) pieces had to be loaded onto our F450 truck and driven up to the site and then unloaded.  All this takes some time and by the end of the second exhausting day we still did not have all the steel picked up off the road.  On Thursday our efforts continued and by the afternoon of the third day we had all the steel moved up to our land.  Our work was not yet over, however.  The pieces still had to be checked against the shipping manifold and sorted by building number.  Also, a number of the pieces were scattered around the property (in the road, for example) and had to be stacked and organized.  This process continued through Saturday, finally finishing up just as the rains from the far fringes of hurricane Irene were starting to bring some much needed rain.  So now we have our building parts.  Now we still have to finish the roads, excavate the foundations, pour the footers, etc. etc.

The rented fork lift arrives on a roll-off.

Nick spends some time practicing before the buildings arrive.

This vehicle is larger than we actually needed but it was the only thing that the rental company had available.

The truck with our building backs down Orchard Lane.

The unloading begins. 

It was a little tight for space but this was the best spot to unload.

Bit by bit we get the job done.

Once the flatbed is gone we move the pieces off Orchard Lane.
Some of the longer pieces had to be loaded onto our F450 to get to the build site.

These long boxes contain decorative trim metal and gutters.

The F450 with a load of long structural steel beams.

Nick got pretty good at driving this monster fork truck.

As dusk falls on the third day the checking and sorting of the pieces begins.

Some of the pieces temporarily ended up in the road.

We sorted the pieces by building.
Each of these piles contain the main structural beams for one of the buildings.

In flagrante delicto

One of the more curious insects we find in West Virginia is the stick insect.  They come in various species, some green in color and some brown.  Some are quite large.  The participants in the ménage à trois in the picture below are about 5 to 6 centimeters in length.