I broke the tractor! Let's do some "blacksmith work" And an Unexpected Setback!

I don't claim to be a blacksmith if you guys know anything better to do please let me know in the description down there if you like this kind of content pound that like button subscribe to the channel and yes behind me is a 1987 Buick Grand National hey there folks this is Josh Stoney Ridge farmer welcome back to the farm well you knew it was gonna happen sooner or later we broke the ventrac well we really didn't break the ventrac I broke the ventrac I ran over a rock about this big that was buried up in the grass and could not see it with the finish mower so we've got the blade on the furthest side of the finish mower and it's shaped like this now so we're gonna pull this blade off we're gonna try to beat it back straight so we can finish mowing the yard and I'll show you how the ventrac mower cuts we'll have some fun here on the farm today all right whoo ain't afraid of [Music] this is my freedom I change as well as you can keys so we're walking down here to the scene of the crime me and you and the dogs what happened was on this farm we called the Stoney Ridge farm because there are a lot of stones a lot of rocks around here and they only stick up about this far out of the ground but if you hook them just right with the mower blade it'll pull them rocks right out of the ground and that's what happened down here by the garden shed check it out so this building here we call the honey shack it's got all our beekeeping equipment in it and you can see one rock buried up right here still and there's a hole somewhere around in here it's already grown back in it seems like well there it is there's a hole right here where this rock was and this is the rock that I nailed with the ventrac blade and that is a monster of a rock really I'm surprised I didn't damage the spindle and I hit that rock but we're gonna show you how cool and how unique the ventrac machine is with the cutting blade in other words it will raise up to where you can sharpen your blades without having to remove them we're gonna have to pull this blade though for all you folks that are wondering that's an 86 cutlass supreme eighty-six thousand miles on it and that is a 1990 454 Super Sport pickup truck but those vehicles we're probably going to end up selling on the farm vlog I don't know really for sure if we need to keep them or not I love them like them but mrs. Stoney Ridge has my priorities elsewhere like building a house so everybody knows don't confuse this with the tough cut this is the finished mower for the ventrac and underneath here are the belts they're simply an arm right here that you release the tension on the belts and I've already had this thing up there's a little blocker right here that keeps the hydraulic cylinder from extending and lifting the deck while you're mowing so there are two pins you pull one big pin over here two little pins right here and you just take the lever on the ventrac and raise it up pretty cool we'll show you how it works well let the glow plug cycle on the ventrac here we'll fire it up we got a little frost last night so it was a little chilly contact all right we'll raise our lift all the way up like so and then we'll hit our hydraulic control and that gets us all raised up or we can work underneath the ventrac so we'll leave it up just like this while we work on it your zero turn mower won't do that that is super awesome this is a 72 inch deck this is a finished mower basically you have three spindles underneath here they have greasable fittings and this big roller right here is a striper that comes on this kit so in other words I can strike my lawn which is super duper cool both of these blades are good to go but this blade right here is not we're gonna take it off real quick I'll show you how bent it is I'd black that rock pretty good busting out one of my favorite little tools in our arsenal guys this is the new style battery with the old style Dewalt so in other words this is an adapter I'll post a link down the video description to that adapter SuperDuper handy we're gonna be using some funky wall tools on this job okay loosen this guy up just got down and here is our normal blade and here is what we've done whoopsie-daisy things like this happen sometimes you break stuff on the farm so obviously this caused a problem over that nice pretty straight blade and not so pretty not so straight blade you can see the paint kind of flaked off of it a little bit very very impressed the part numbers right here in case you need to replace the part we called ventrac this morning early and we ordered a new set of blades for this and a new set of blades for the tough cut brush hog so basically my idea here is to take said big hema and this makeshift anvil so this is an old piece of railroad oh and it is heavy heavy heavy listen to this thing it's got a nice ring to it so we're going to take it and beat it out and then we're gonna take our Dewalt grinder I just bought this super cool so I can come out and sharpen the blades basically it's a cordless grinder while we've got the deck up in the upright position we're going to go ahead and hit those blades and give them a nice sharp sharp edge so we can finish mowing I don't claim to be a blacksmith if you guys know anything better to do please let me know in the description down there if you like this kind of content pound that like button subscribe to the channel let's get busy trying to beat this blade out so that it doesn't scalp the yard will probably go on and replace this blade if we can't get it straight but for now I got to finish more in the yard and it's scalping real bad about that far down my thought is to hit right out here and let it sit right on there so I think that's what we're gonna do I think we're gonna let it sit flat this is gonna be interesting this is a Big Bend coming on out of there pretty good still pretty darn crooked let's try hitting it right here where the arc is on that Bend might need to heat this thing up whoa that's hard on the old hand on this side tap tappy tap whoa it's a spring I hope we don't have to go to the hospital after this fYI kids don't try this at home at some point you got to wonder when is getting the lawn finished worth this amount of pain on your wrist man that's a strong blade it's just spring it back ideally I'd put this in a vise and bend it back but I don't have a very nice heavy-duty vise table to bend it so in other words I clamped that and give it a good tug and hopefully bend it back I'm not so sure that this repair is gonna work for us hmm all right we're getting serious got some gloves now now I can whack it harder oh yeah nice coming on back it's coming back to me come on baby come on baby that seems stupid man still got a nasty twist in it that's what's right and that's what we got it's not working without heat I'm gonna have to get some heat some sort of a heat source I don't have a torch so I do have map gas I think we might heat it up with map gas but I'm pretty sure that's gonna weaken the blade and we'll most definitely have to replace that blade I may make some phone calls and see if I can find a blade locally because I ordered these blades and it's gonna take about three days to get in and the grass needs mowing it's really really thick down the orchard don't make me lie to you I just went to my local hardware store my local farm store and asked the guys if I could go back in the back and put this on their vise and try to straighten it out a little bit I'm having my doubts about being able to straighten this this is a really really tough piece of metal it is a 5/8 stick 25 inch right hand sling blade I guess is what you would call it so that's straight and that's what we've got so far now we did straighten it out a little bit that's exactly perfectly straight right there we straightened it out just a little bit from what it was before the next step which they would not allow me to do with the vise is heating it up so I've got some map gas we're gonna heat this little section up right here and see if we can found this out I don't see any reason why we wouldn't be able to heat it up a little bit without damaging the blade for sure if we heat it up we're gonna replace this blade after this time mowing this is not the right thing to do so don't do as I do do as I say someone do this at home let's heat this guy up real quick map gas burns a little bit hotter than propane but unfortunately I don't have a settling torch here at the house we're just going to heat it up right here on the bend and then we're going to give it a good whack all right let's give her a little tap tappy tap once again Oh looks to me like it's not working at all oh yeah she working coming on out of there rough on the hands oh yeah not gonna go back perfect but it's straightening out the more I heat on it the more it straightens out and probably the weaker the middle gets heat it again he didn't mean it son thing working the tar out of me boy come on now straighten it on up a little bit I could just see that hammer jumping back and hit me in the forehead then we can all go to the hospital together look at that that's a it's what it's supposed to be and that's what it is whoa and that's hot through the glove it's hot I think this is where our mission stops so we're gonna we're gonna call that good enough to get the lawn mowed today and then we'll put the new blade on when it comes in from ventrac whoo we tried we can't say we didn't try this material I'm just afraid I'm gonna weaken it I don't want to heat it up really really really hot I'm afraid I'm gonna weaken it I still think it's gonna do a great job it was only scalping like this much when I was mowing a little bit earlier so hopefully fingers crossed this thing does a great job I've been riding this thing for one cut so far so basically I've been on it for about three hours three and a half hours something like that let me tell you it is spoiling me completely rotten so we'll get some drone images of what goes on and hopefully get your fingers crossed we don't scalp the crap out of the yard cool we're gonna reinstall the blade get on the mower and cross our fingers before we get on the mower I totally forgot we've got a grinder here we're going to go ahead and sharpen this while it's off of the mower we're just gonna put a little edge on and we're not gonna go grinding crazy on it but we're just going to try and take off some of that rough stuff and as you can see I hit the rock right there too so will grind off all that grit right off that factory edge so it can rest for us and we'll put it back on the mower and we'll go ahead and sharpen up all the blades on the mower now all right well fire up the ventrac and we'll lower our deck back down it's really slow going down so it doesn't get damaged when this deck works is there's a hydraulic cylinder right here and then there's a little lever that locks that in place to keep it from raising up you push this down and that is your belt tensioner so it's easy to change belts basically I think it's just one belt that runs through the whole thing that's what it looks like so you put that in you lock this down and then there are two pins that go right here on the little rotating apparatus and then you close it up and you're good to go ready to mow so one of the coolest things about that Finnish mower is the striping as you can see down through the yard it's all striped up beautifully super awesome weather it scalps this much or not we're going to go ahead and mow now you can see and you'll see in the drone footage you see this darker grass well that's where the grass has gotten too tall over in the orchard area so that's something that we really want to address if it does scalp it'll only scalp it for like two days and I'll probably won't even be able to tell it next time I mow with the new blades it'll do just fine we're gonna pull off all three blades that have already been used put three new ones and keep the two spares so I already told you I've been spoiled I've been spoiled from the zero turn so I have a John Deere commercial zero turn mower in no way does it make my lawn look like this you'll get some awesome shots from the drone about the striping of the lawn it really really looks awesome and I can buy a striper for my zero turn also but I can't sharpen my blades and tip it up like that let's talk about the severity of the scalp you can see it scalping right there and it's just because that blades down about that much further than the rest of the blade I don't think it's gonna make a bit of difference at all I think it's gonna help with the striping actually so get busy check out this drone footage it's gonna be awesome beautiful it's put some cool music with it [Music] [Applause] [Music] needless to say the mower did a great job I am at a stopping point because there is a huge honey bee swarm down in the orchard so we're gonna catch that swarm real quick this is what's going on so sometimes you got to drop what you're doing to catch a honey bee swarm I can't really mow right up next to them and we need to catch them because that bunch of bees is worth about 110 hundred 20 bucks we're gonna ride the Gator down there to the honey bees and I've got a couple buckets I'm gonna put my bee suit on real quick and the way we're gonna do this is we're just gonna put a hive basically I've already got one prepared in the bee yard we're gonna put that hive directly underneath the swarm it is a huge swarm I'm gonna say probably five pounds of bees so normal package of bees it's about three pounds this is probably close to double what a package of bees is so awesome stuff we're gonna go down here to the honey Shack and once again grab another swarm of bees that's the honey Shack Garden Shack right here is our honeybees swarm and it is spectacular it is huge this is probably the biggest worm we've had all year this year it is a monstrous monstrous swarm cannot wait to catch that good it'd be cool I'm just gonna set the camera up so you guys can watch I'm gonna go get the bee box and set the bee box in the appropriate place get the tripod all set up we're gonna capture this big old swarm mm let me tell you how this is supposed to go before we get started if I can get these little bitty baby gloves on what happens is when you work your bees you sweat in your gloves they're made out of a really soft leather and they kind of shrink up a little bit on ya so these have shrinkage that's pretty funny there we go they're like they almost feel like spacesuit gloves and this is a breathable honeybee suit and these guys are my buddies my B buddies so check out try out bee supply.com if you need any honeybee stuff let's give this is a second swarm in this same tree and in the last like four days our honeybees are swarming like crazy and what a swarm is is basically the old queen packs up and leaves and takes half the bees with her so that means that my hives are very very healthy and they're got a huge nectar flow right now so this is normal for spring so the saying is swarm in May let them stay swarm in July let them fly so we're gonna let them stay and I'd like to talk to you more about honey bees and honey bee swarms and what's really going on here so right now you see a bunch of bees flying around well these are little scout bees and the Scout bees are going out and coming back and going out and coming back and they're looking for a new place it has a specific size to build their new hive so that's what's going on somewhere in that bunch is the Queen and they follow her smell or her pheromones so the pheromone from the Queen is why they're on this limb pretty cool once we get the Queen inside the bee box which is going to be sitting on these buckets right here then most of the bees should abandon this spot smell that Queen and go right in the hive the honey bees sense of smell is 10 times stronger than ours here's a box I already had prepared I'm gonna pop out a couple frames and we'll shake these bees down in here or just scoop them up and set them in there really cool inside this hive is all sorts of yumminess in there for the bees it's like a little snack for those bees there's pollen basically fermented pollen in those little chambers right there exactly what we want here it goes I'm gonna lean the tree over ever so slightly we're gonna shake got a nice breeze blowing I wanna wait till that stops we're gonna shake them off this is fun one two three a lot of the bees ended up on the ground right there it's not really what we wanted so what will happen is all these bees you can see them flying around me if the Queen is still on the limb they'll go back to the limb if she's not on the limb we'll just continue to shake shake shake until we get them all off this might seem scary to some people but this is the most docile the honey bees will be because they're in search they're not in search of a fight they're in search of a home pretty cool there are a lot of bees around let's get the camera and go in the hive real quick this is a cool surprise so you can see down here we kind of missed our mark with our honeybees with the swarm but they're slowly working their way into this box now if the Queen was in there I would anticipate the bees kind of all lining up and going in I don't think I have the Queen in here you can tell by the sound of the bees kind of what's going on here really really interesting so if at first you don't shake seed then shake again the wind really has this messed up when I shake the tree the bees fall too far past a little hive we have right here but anyhow these bees will go in then hive eventually and we'll have one more hive in the bee yard which will make six hives pretty cool now that all the fun's over we got to wait probably hour and a half maybe two maybe tomorrow before I mow this area this grass was really really high I'd let it go way too long but the ventrac kind of kicked but we've got a little bit more to mow out here and we're gonna go get busy what do you guys think about that drunk footage what do you think man looks really nice I think it looks better from the ground super happy super happy with the mower we did great today we had a good time we didn't quite get that blade fixed but we've got three new blades coming I'm gonna replace all three and take the ones that I've used already and have them as spares I hope you guys enjoyed this fun on the farm we had an unexpected bee swarm which was pretty cool the bees took to the hive already had the hive lined up with the rest of the hive so we have six honeybee hives now and we only started with three this year that's three swarms out of three hives very happy with that catching a honey bee swarm like that's like finding a hundred and twenty dollar bill on the ground awesome guys be sure and stay tuned we're going to get into the bees will show you we'll teach you about the bees and we're gonna get started on the garden it frosted this morning we are not out of the water when it comes to frost so we've got to probably give it about another 15 days before we get into the garden but hopefully we get our little seeds planted very soon folks thanks a lot for joining me here on the farm today I hope you had a good time with the farm blog I look forward to many more with you so pound that like button subscribe the channel click that Bell icon it'll notify you when I post a new video and we can have some more fun here on the farm alright [Music] Pierce we've had some ways opposed to me stone Tyrion