It seems like when we start a job around the farm, we know what we’re getting into.

We’ve done things dozens of times… hundreds, thousands, MILLIONS of times we’ve done things! And still. You just never know HOW LONG something will take.

Yesterday was a great winter day here on the farm. The sun was shining, the wind was calm, and chores got done in record time. That left us with a little time before lunch to get a few things done.

We opted to grind feed, 5 batches in all, figuring a couple hours of work before heading in for lunch.

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We ground both shell corn from our bins and ear corn from the corn crib, grinding enough to fill two steer feeders, a calf feeder, a granary we use for our dry cow feed, and a load for our dairy cow ration.

All was going good until we got to the last load. We pulled up to the bin to add some shell corn, switched the auger on the grinder on, it made about a half a turn and then… nothing. Tried it again… nothing.     Crap.

We decided to run home (luckily we had the truck along) and get some tools, as we thought maybe we sheared a pin, lost a key or maybe a chain came off ??? Who knows.

We got back and took the housing off and saw that the chain tightener had come loose on the chain that runs the auger. We put the chain back on, raised the tightener, cinched things up and we were back in business! (Sometimes we’re not so lucky)

So we finished our last load and headed in for lunch. Well, maybe we should call it a mid-afternoon snack, ha ha. And that’s what happens when we run on “Fagle Time.” When things don’t go quite as smoothly as planned and it costs us some time. Luckily, the only thing we were late for this time was lunch 🙂