What's up today (bullchiting) thread.

109 mph gusts...Happy you didn't sustain a bunch of damage!

 

Cut the yard first time this year. So much prefer cutting or bush hogging when temps and humidity are down! Just can’t wait for summer…….NOT

 

Wind is ripping today....nothing destructive but it isn't much fun to be outside.

 

Been running on Genny for a couple hours here....Windy!!

 

Thank you.

 

Power restored here...For now anyway!

 

Hopefully your next adventure brings comfort, Safety and financial security to you and your much deserving family. Stay strong, good times are just around the corner!

 

Wow, that is crazy!

 

I forgot to mention that I saw a robin on the property Tue morning. Hope it turned around and went south ......

 

This was a few days ago. Keweenaw at 325" as of today.

Hang on Yoopers...1-3' coming tomorrow!!

 

Haven't been on the site as much lately. Wondering if anyone has heard anything from Sandhillbilly ? I know there are wildfires out his way so hopefully he is staying safe.

 

He was last on the site on Thursday and last posted on Sunday.

 

Well the ground is white… again

 

Thank you for that. I did send him a PM as well.

 

If ya have a few minutes and like a good story...this is probably fictional, but I enjoyed it anyways...it could've actually happened.


The Engineers Said Nothing Can Pull It Out — Then the Old Man Fired Up His 1912 Steam Engine...
On a Tuesday morning in September of 1992, Frank Donnelly stood at the edge of a swamp and watched his career sink into the mud. 3 days earlier, his company's newest piece of equipment, a Caterpillar 375 excavator, $600,000 of hydraulic power, and computerized precision had broken through what the surveyors promised was solid ground.
The machine had dropped like a stone, its 60-ton weight punching through the thin crust of dried earth into the bottomless black muck beneath. Now the excavator sat in the swamp like a wounded dinosaur, buried to its cab, its yellow paint streaked with mud, its tracks completely invisible beneath the surface. Every hour, it seemed to sink another inch.
Frank had tried everything. On the first day, he'd brought in two Caterpillar D8 bulldozers and chained them to the stuck machine. The bulldozers had pulled until their own tracks started to slip, until the chains groaned and one of them snapped with a sound like a gunshot. The excavator hadn't moved an inch.
On the second day, he'd called in a recovery company from Des Moines, specialists in heavy equipment extraction. They'd brought a truck with a 50-ton winch and anchored it to a concrete foundation half a mile away. The winch had screamed, the cable had stretched, and the anchor had ripped out of the ground. The excavator had sunk another 6 inches.
On the third day, Frank had rented a crane. The crane operator had taken one look at the swamp, shaken his head, and refused to get within a 100 feet of the edge. "That ground won't hold me," he'd said. "You want two machines stuck instead of one?" Now Frank stood with his engineers looking at a piece of equipment worth more than most houses slowly disappearing into the earth.
"What about a helicopter?" one of the engineers suggested. "A sky crane could lift it."
"A sky crane costs $15,000 an hour," Frank said. "And the nearest one is in Minnesota. By the time it gets here, that excavator will be underground."
"We could drain the swamp."
"With what? That swamp is fed by an underground spring. We'd need a month and a million dollars."
"Insurance?"
Frank laughed bitterly. "Insurance doesn't cover operator error. And according to the fine print, driving into a swamp counts as operator error." The engineers fell silent. They were running out of options, and they knew it. That's when the John Deere tractor pulled up to the edge of the construction site.
Let me tell you about Walter Brennan because you need to understand the man before you can understand what he did. Walter was 73 years old and had farmed the same 400 acres in Clayton County for 50 years. His land bordered the construction site or what would become Highway 52 when Donnelly Construction finished the job. Walter had watched the construction crews arrive 6 months ago, watched them survey and grade and pour concrete. Watched them bring in equipment that cost more than his entire farm was worth.
He hadn't complained when the noise scared his cattle. He hadn't complained when the construction traffic tore up the county road. He hadn't even complained when the project manager told him he'd need to relocate his fence line because the original survey had been wrong.
Walter Brennan wasn't a complainer. He was a watcher. And he'd been watching this stuck excavator for three days, waiting to see if the construction company would figure it out. They hadn't, so Walter drove his John Deere to the edge of the site, climbed down, and walked over to where Frank Donnelly stood with his engineers.
"Morning," Walter said.
Frank barely glanced at him. "Morning. Site's closed to visitors. Insurance liability."
"I'm not a visitor. I'm your neighbor. Own the land on the other side of that tree line." Walter nodded toward the stuck excavator. "Saw your problem. Thought I might be able to help."
Frank looked at him, looked at the worn overalls, the mud-caked boots, the 73-year-old face weathered by half a century of Iowa weather. "Help? How?"
"I can pull that out." The words hung in the air. The engineers exchanged glances. Someone coughed. Frank Donnelly started to laugh.
Let me tell you about that laugh because it's important to the story. Frank Donnelly was 45 years old and had built Donnelly Construction from nothing. He'd started with one backhoe and a pickup truck, worked 18-hour days for 20 years, and turned himself into the biggest contractor in eastern Iowa. He employed 150 men. He had equipment worth millions. He'd built bridges and highways and shopping centers and schools.
Frank Donnelly was not a humble man. Success had taught him that he was smarter than most people, harder working than most people, better than most people. When he looked at Walter Brennan, at the old farmer in his worn clothes with his ancient tractor, he saw everything he'd spent his life proving he wasn't. So he laughed.
"You can pull that out," Frank repeated, still laughing. "With what? That John Deere? Walter, I appreciate the thought, but that machine weighs sixty tons and the suction of that mud is adding another forty. Two D8 dozers couldn't budge it. A fifty-ton winch tore a concrete slab out of the earth trying. Your tractor will snap in half."
Walter didn't smile. He didn't blink. He just reached into his chest pocket, pulled out a pocket watch, checked the time, and looked back at Frank. "Didn't say I'd use the Deere. Said I could pull it out."
Frank's laughter died down, replaced by a mixture of exhaustion and annoyance. "Alright, Walter. What's your miracle machine?"
"Got a 1912 Case steam traction engine sitting in my barn," Walter said evenly. "110 horsepower. Geared low. She doesn't slip, she doesn't jerk, and she doesn't quit. I'll have her fired up and down here by noon."
One of the younger engineers scoffed. "A steam engine? From 1912? That's a museum piece. It won't have a fraction of the hydraulic breakout force of our dozers."
Walter finally smiled, just a subtle tightening of the corners of his mouth. "Torque isn't about hydraulics, son. It's about physics. Diesels build power with RPMs—they spin, they jerk, they break things. Steam builds maximum torque from a dead stop. You just keep opening the throttle, and the engine just keeps pulling."
Frank looked at the excavator. The mud was halfway up the cab windows now. He was out of options, out of money, and out of pride. "Fine," Frank sighed. "If you can pull that machine out of the swamp, Walter, I'll write you a check for five thousand dollars right here on the hood of my truck."
"Keep your money," Walter said, turning back to his tractor. "Just fix my fence line like it was, and grade my driveway when you're done with this highway."
By 11:30 AM, a low, rhythmic chugging sound echoed across the valley. A thick plume of black coal smoke rose above the treeline. Frank and his crew stood in stunned silence as Walter Brennan steered the beast out of the woods and onto the construction site.
The 1912 Case steam traction engine was a monster of iron, steel, and brass. It weighed over twenty tons, rolling on massive rear wheels that stood six feet tall and three feet wide, lined with heavy steel cleats. Steam hissed from its valves, and the ground trembled beneath its weight. It looked less like a tractor and more like a locomotive that had decided to go for a walk in the woods.
Walter pulled the colossal machine to a halt about two hundred feet from the swamp, perfectly aligning the heavy drawbar with the rear of the sunken excavator. He climbed down from the operator's platform, wiping grease from his hands with a rag.
"Get your thickest cables," Walter instructed Frank's stunned engineers. "No chains. Chains snap when they get angry. Wire rope stretches and holds."
The crew scrambled, dragging out a two-inch-thick steel recovery cable—the heaviest they had. They waded into the muck, attaching one end to the excavator's rear tow points, and hauled the other end up to Walter, who secured it over the massive iron pin on the Case's drawbar.
"Now," Walter said, climbing back up to the controls and grabbing the heavy iron throttle lever. "Everybody stand way back."
Walter threw a few more shovelfuls of coal into the firebox. The fire roared, and the boiler pressure gauge needle crept past 150 PSI. He engaged the heavy gearing with a massive, metallic clank that echoed off the hills.
Slowly, deliberately, Walter pulled the throttle lever.
The steam engine didn't roar. It didn't scream like the diesels had. It simply took a deep, hissing breath and began to pull.
Chuff... chuff... chuff...
The slack in the massive steel cable vanished in an instant, snapping taut with a violent hum. The steam engine's massive iron wheels dug their cleats into the solid earth. Walter gave it a little more throttle.
Chuff.. chuff.. chuff.. chuff..
The cable grew so tense it looked as though it were made of solid glass. Water began to squeeze out of the steel weave from the sheer pressure. Frank held his breath, waiting for the cable to snap or the old machine's engine to stall out.
But the Case didn't stall. The beauty of steam power, just as Walter had said, was the relentless, compounding torque. The engine RPM barely changed; it just bore down, demanding the earth to yield. Black smoke billowed into the Iowa sky. The giant iron wheels didn't spin; they gripped the dirt like claws, burying themselves a few inches deep as the machine leaned its massive weight into the pull.
Something had to give.
From the swamp came a sound like a giant taking a wet, gasping breath. Schluuuurrrk.
"Look!" one of the engineers yelled.
The mud around the excavator's tracks was bubbling and cracking. The vacuum of the swamp, which had held sixty tons of modern engineering hostage for three days, was finally breaking.
Walter opened the throttle a fraction more. The steam engine roared a steady, rhythmic cadence.
CHUFF-CHUFF-CHUFF-CHUFF!
With a sickening, sloppy squelch, the rear of the yellow Caterpillar rose out of the black muck. Once the suction was broken, the rest was inevitable. Inch by inch, foot by foot, the 1912 steam engine dragged the modern marvel backward through the mud. It hauled the dead weight of the excavator over the lip of the swamp and onto the solid, dry earth of the construction site.
Walter didn't stop until the machine was a full fifty feet clear of the danger zone. Then, he smoothly closed the throttle, disengaged the gears, and let the great iron beast settle into a quiet, hissing idle.
For a long moment, the only sounds were the crackle of the coal fire and the popping of the cooling mud dropping off the rescued excavator.
Frank Donnelly stood completely frozen. He looked at his $600,000 investment, safe on solid ground. Then he looked at the seventy-three-year-old farmer and the eighty-year-old piece of iron that had just saved his livelihood.
Walter climbed down from the platform, grabbed his grease rag, and walked over to unpin the cable.
Frank walked over, his boots crunching on the gravel. He didn't laugh this time. He took off his hard hat and extended a trembling hand. "Walter," he said, his voice thick with a humility he hadn't felt in decades. "I owe you an apology. And I owe you a whole lot more than a fence line."
Walter shook Frank's hand, his grip still firm and strong. "A man's only as good as his tools and his word, Frank. You just make sure that fence is straight."
With a tip of his weathered cap, Walter Brennan climbed back aboard his steam engine, pulled the whistle cord to let out a triumphant shriek of white steam, and slowly chugged back toward his farm, leaving the biggest contractor in eastern Iowa staring in silent awe at a cloud of coal smoke fading into the autumn sky.

 

Great story brenndatomu