Bad - Good Day

It all started when the tractor wouldn't start this morning.
I had hopes of getting a large section of the field disked well and rowed up today, but that idea went by the wayside as tractor maintenance took up more and more time. It was acting like it wanted to crank over, but had a bad connection somewhere and since the battery cables looked terrible that's where I started.
Oh, wait. I actually started checking for blockages in the fuel line, and found one! The rubber hose had a crimp in it and the middle layer (of rope material) had broke through the inside of the hose, thus obstructing the safe and quick passage of fuel from point A to point B. Solution: Replace with hose line from old lawn mower. This however did not do the trick, but it was one fix.
As I was saying, the battery cables looked terrible...

Can you see a problem with this?

We had some extra cables hanging around (literally), and so I got to work running new cables through the tractor.

Doesn't this look so much better?

This definitely solved the poor connection problem, and was fix number two, but the tractor still wouldn't start. Pulled a good battery out of the car (shhh...) and that definitely gave it more juice, but it wasn't quite the repair I needed. That would be fix number three, however.
It seemed to be a "lack of gas to engine" problem, so I rechecked the fuel lines and filter as well as the carburetor, but all seemed well. Next step, check all the points.
Took off the distributor cap and, wow, was that ever a mess. There was residue covering all the points, fix number four. Still nothing, so onto spark plugs. As I pulled one of the spark plug wires off of the distributor cap the metal snap just slipped right off the wire! Fix number five, all the spark plugs checked positive, and yet no start. So, there was a fuel problem, somewhere. The next move told all, sort of.
As I cranked the engine over I sprayed starter fluid into the carburetor, and what do you know? It started! For a second. So, there was definitely something wrong in the carburetor. As a last ditch effort I brought it in to a tractor supply/repair place nearby (with less than an hour to spare before closing) to get some help. "You probably need to take the jets out and clean them out." Oh.
I wish I had taken a picture of it! Some of those tiny holes in the small jet inside the carburetor were definitely blocked up bad. Solution: Attach the skinny nosed air blower that you found earlier that day onto the air compressor, crank up to over 100lb, and let fly! No, no, no! Not the jet!
After giving the jets and the carburetor a thorough blowing out the tractor started just fine! (Fix number six got me out of the mix!) By this time, however, it was getting too late to do much with the disks, so I decided to prepare some of my flats for seeds.
I had bought a large bag of 3B potting soil a couple days ago, and using that, proceeded to fill twelve full flats (equal to 576 separate planting compartments, 4 x 12 to a flat). I know it's late getting tomatoes, peppers, and the like started in a greenhouse, but I'm actually starting earlier than I did last year, and those did great!
So, it looks like we may be back in business, after a long day.