The ground is still too wet to get to the compost heap with the tractor, and it's still too wet to till the victory garden, but it isn't too wet to pick up sticks and cut grass, so that got done over the weekend. We also cleaned out the winter's accumulation of horse poo from the barn.
Wife and daughter planted a few trees. Couple each of burr oak, swamp chestnut oak, and some flowering thing that I can't remember right now.
In between doing all of that stuff I found some time to work on Mr. Clarence. Cylinder head is off and being delivered to the machine shop for an overhaul. It didn't look to be terrible, and probably would be fine to put back as-is, but it will be good to go for sure this way. There's a bit of ring groove in the cylinder bores, but no scoring, so I'm going to leave that stuff alone.
The three point lift was stuck in the raised position, and no amount of external persuasion would make it go back down, so I pulled the control module off and tore into it. Found one piece of the touch control linkage bent pretty badly. It was an easy fix to straighten that. The bigger problem is in the lift cylinder. The piston is stuck either from rust or gummed oil. I got it to move in a bit, but I need it to move all the way out so I can clean it up. The bore is blind so it can't be pressed out, and there's no way to attach a puller, so I'm ruminating on a solution. In the meantime I've got it in the wash tank soaking.
