moving the grain bin

Friday we moved a grain bin from another farm yard, to its new location, here at home atop a Fast FAB hopper bottom.

Darin getting the crane attachment ready to put inside the bin so it can be lifted.

 Tony & Darin taking out the bolts that anchor the bin down.

Warren working from the inside

Up.....

and Away...

Onto the trailer,

leaving the yard where it has sat for many, many years, 

and down the road to its new home.

Natalie's new achievements

Yesterday Natalie starting making a funny face by sucking her lips in.



This video was taken at the end of the day. She hadn't taken good naps all day and was pretty tired, but did roll over and chat a little bit. Of course she talked up a storm when the camera was off!

Fun Day

We had a fun day today.  Amy and Natalie came up with Tony.  Natalie is now 4 months old, and has changed so much since the last time she was here.  She has started to roll over, is making lots of new sounds and faces, and loves to chat with anyone who will visit with her.  Here are a couple of pictures from the day.

Down the Road

The first of the Fast FAB hoppers are down the road and at their new home.  Yesterday two of them were loaded onto a trailer and headed north to Daniels County.

office update

Last week Warren installed our counter tops in the office.  As soon as that was done, the computer was brought upstairs and hooked up, and I started working on books.  The last week has been spent entering information into the 3 accounts that are due to the accountant soon, and moving into the office.  I've done a lot of filing.  We still need to find chairs, some lighting for under the cabinets and figure out how to organize the closet, but we are getting close to finishing up the room!  Here is what its looking like for now.

the south wall - the wire sticking out is for the heat thermostat.  We're not sure yet what we will do for the heating in the room. The cubby holes are for mail, bills and that type of supplies.

The desk area - we're going to drill some holes into the counter top for computer cords and such, so that will make it much easier to work there.  The cubby holes above the desk are for current work projects.

Looking from the window toward the desk area.

 

Fast FAB

One big part of Life on Fast Road the last few months has been Tony's thriving welding business, Fast FAB.  In October, Tony decided to build a couple of hopper bottoms for grain bins and see if there was enough interest in them to go into production.  He hauled one of them to Glasgow Implement in Glasgow, MT, to display,  put up advertising fliers in a couple of local towns, put an ad in a local paper, and his phone hasn't stopped ringing since.  He now has 2 full time employees helping him build the hoppers.

The hoppers are built upside down, and start out as flat sheets of metal, welded together with a hole in the middle, and a triangle cut out to the edge.  Then its lifted up which forms the cone shape. The cone is then set on a jig that holds the ring that the grain bin is bolted to. 

Cutting the iron for the legs.

The legs and bottom skid go on, then they are flipped right side up.

the flipping process

the next step is to finish welding and painting.

 

a few of the finished product

In case you're wondering, "OK, so what do you do with these things?"  here is a picture of some of our previous hopper bottoms under gain bins.  The hoppers do a couple of things.  They increase the number of bushels stored in each bin, and best of all, they pretty much eliminate the need to get inside the bin to shovel and sweep out the grain by hand!

Cooke City

Warren and four other guys went to Cooke City for a snowmobile trip.  Cooke City is a small town just east of the NE entrance to Yellowstone National Park. It is a small tourist town which started out as a mining town. There are snowmobile trails that lead from town into the mountains. Here are some pictures from our adventure.  (If you click on the pictures you will see the complete picture.)

Chadd & Tony getting ready to hit the trails.

Looking west in Cooke.

Warren looking for some powder.

Made it to the top.

Chadd made it up, but now how do I get back down.

Looking south near Daisy Pass.  Ajay sitting in the foreground waiting to go down and help the others turn Bill around after making it almost up the hill.

Looking back up the same hill from the down below.  Bill, Tony, and Chadd almost to the top but almost doesn't count, Bill.

Bill, Ajay, Tony, and Chadd after a day of riding.

The view we had from the same spot as the previous picture. We saw a rider on the mountain who is the little black dot in the sunlight in the middle of the picture.  We we at least 2 miles away from him.  Pictures don't show how big the area or mountains really are.

Going through the Park we ran into the 5 o'clock rush hour.  There were about 5 buffalo in line with this one. Check the mirror.  I don't know if  we saw more buffalo or tourists stopped along the road looking at them.

On the way home in Livingston.

Chadd and Bill trying to knock each other out with the Wii boxing game.  Ajay waiting to take on the winner?