Marge the rains are ‘ere

November 2009

(A delayed posting - but what the heck? - Still Funny - even now!)

Cup Weekend in Melbourne saw the ritual mowing of the firebreaks begin – well we hoped! We have had more rain than previous years and thus the grass actually grew, thus enabling us to mow it.

It was a comedy of errors/problems.

The push-me-pull me mower, wouldn’t start. Pulled the spark plugs, cleaned them, re-spaced them and it worked.

The ride-on mower – had to jump start it, as it wouldn’t crank over. Should have been easy, alas was not meant to be. The smell of petrol was over-riding, a quick check under the bonnet revealed a split fuel hose. Shouldn’t be a problem, except services stations no longer service anything, they only supply fuel, nothing else. A 60km round trip and we have acquired a new fuel hose. Fuel hose fitted, jumper leads fitted, mower started, but intermittently stalling. Persistence pays off, the carbon is blown out – the mower works. Until, half-way round the front yard and the magnets that hold the deck up failed, due to the low power in the battery, thus causing the mower deck to cut out. No amount of persuading would make it work. Of course it is Sunday and a new battery is not so easily acquired! Ride-on left in front yard as dead as a dodo!

We move onto the tractor, so we can slash the paddocks, once again the battery is flat, tow it out of the shed, hook up the jumper leads. So should be an easy fix, or so we thought. It’s been that long we forgot which levers need to be in which positions to get the bloody thing to turn over!

Finally after 10 minutes the engine is turning over. Yippee. The front fire break is cut, now the property boundaries to be done. The heavy clover clogs up the deck and the tractor is stalled. Car bought over to the tractor, tractor jump started again, and the merry-go-round starts!

Stall, jump leads, start, Stall, jump leads, start, in the end we leave the bloody thing in the paddock like some monolithic giant!

The ride-on and tractor remain in the paddocks until Monday morning. New batteries acquired, only ½ the job done.

BUGGER – now the other 10 acres needs to be cut. Could be fun next weekend (Not!)