When I was a young kid we would occasionally visit my Uncle John. I remember him fondly. He had a large barn on his property that was chock full of the most incredible treasures of every description from far and wide. He was a collector of great renown. He had an old tractor too that we sometimes got to ride which was a touchstone memory for me, even to this day. When we moved onto our property in Yarrow seventeen years ago he would sometimes drop by for a little visit. Each time he would bring something from that old barn as a gift, knowing I would put it to use. One time he offered me a giant weight which I gratefully accepted. I had no idea of where I might use it at the time but I knew that some day it would come in handy. My Uncle John had been storing the weight in his condo basement for years, after selling his large property. I have no idea how he had managed to get it from the basement and into his truck. He explained how he had picked the weight up on the prairies many years ago and how it had been used as a counter weight for a bin door in a grain elevator. Today, I decided to build a counterweight for our tractor. I had been using our rototiller to balance the tractor but it is rather bulky and low to the ground and always scraped when I went up hills. I dug out another counter weight I had built for a previous tractor some time ago which fastened on the three point hitch. It worked well but was a little light when I was doing a lot of digging with the front end loader. As I thought about it I remembered that old grain tower weight and figured it added to the existing weight would be just the ticket. It is cast iron and measured 3” thick by eight inches tall and was 36” long and weighed in at about 250 pounds. I used the plasma cutter to cut some 3/8” brackets and then used our forklift with our lifting magnet to fit the weight into place. It works perfectly. Each time I use the tractor it will bring a smile to my face along with a fond memory of my Uncle John.
