What could be more exciting than a shiny new tractor!
Our old tractor, after some twenty years of service, had problems. Little things -- the mechanism that let the diesel flow to the engine had broken and the expensive replacement part, once procured, didn't fit. That was some years ago and John jury-rigged a workaround involving a piece of string. Not elegant, but it worked.
We have come to rely on a tractor for many things -- bush-hogging, tilling, moving rocks and logs around, digging out our water breaks, scraping the road in winter, sometimes as our only transport up and down the road in winter, and, maybe the most crucial of all, moving those big round bales of hay out of the barn and to the cows.
It's been awfully dry lately and John has been putting out hay as a supplement to the not so lush pasture. And then the old tractor wouldn't go -- froze up.
And the cows needed hay.
After weighing various alternatives -- and, (like the septic tank issue) thinking about what would happen if we got the old tractor fixed and it broke down again in the depths of winter -- John decided to go for a new tractor. A dealer agreed to take the old one in trade and yesterday a roll-back delivered Big Orange and hauled off Old Green.
We'll be paying for it for the next umpteen years -- there goes that world cruise (wink) -- but knowing we have a reliable tractor is right up there with the clean septic tank on the satisfaction scale. Yeah, my life is a little different.
