Innovation meets agriculture...

I believe farmers were some of the first engineers. 

Farmers have long been inventing ways to make tasks easier, or repair something that has malfunctioned. In some cases it can be called redneck innovation, or farmer engineered.

My dad is one of the most creative or innovative. It's like Old McGuyver had a farm, with a bailing wire here, and a string or two there, here a hose, there a hose, even a block of wood...

Perfect example? A leaky diesel tank. 

When agriculture engineering you need the perfect tools. The tools every farmer needs are pictured at left. A glove, WD-40, pliers, and a mini sledge hammer, and a tailgate. 

Everybody needs WD-40 whether you're a farmer or not. Once all the tools are gathered it's time to assess the situation. In our situation we not only needed the pictured tools, but also a Handy-Man jack. In this case we needed these tools to make the jack work before the project even began. 

The situation was a leaking diesel tank on the spigot. 

"How long has this been leaking?" I asked. 

"Couple weeks," 

"Oh, so now is the ideal time to handle this?" I said. 

The problem required tilting the fuel barrel to allow the fuel to run backward, away from the malfunctioning spigot, so a new spigot to be put in. To get the tank up we had to use the jack to raise the tank back enough so the fuel would run to the back. 

Once we got the tank up the tailgate was used as a ladder and a twig was whittled down to fit into a hole that the fuel was leaking from. 

The stick fit perfect and the leak stopped. 

So we now have a tilted fuel barrel with a stick plugging a hole. 

It was a classic case of agriculture engineering.

"I believe we mastered that."

Yes. Yes they did.