Finally, We Used the Tractor!

If you remember from the last update, I promised to tell you all more about our tractor fun. Well, I am happy to announce that we FINALLY USED THE TRACTOR! I mean, like really, we finally did it!

No Experience At All

Now, I have to first tell you, that I have never driven a tractor before in my life. NEVER! I did find the manual to our old John Deere 2020 (aka Herman), so that helped out a lot. And there is always good old YouTube. However, I found that sometimes you don’t realize what you know just from life experiences and you have to pull them up out of you! And this was one of those times.

I had been looking at Herman (our tractor) sit in the garage since last Fall. I had replaced the gas lines, a fuel pump, and the battery and I never had once bush hogged on the property. Our hold up had always been a lack of having a truck. Well, we have Willie (our grumpy 1985 Ford F-350), but he has transmission issues. It’s actually supposed to go back to Tennessee soon for repairs, but maybe more on that later.

The Tractor Plan

It had been raining here almost every weekend making it impossible to do anything, so I just took a Thursday off work. I did it with one goal in mind – to go bush hogging. In addition, we bit the bullet and rented a truck from Enterprise Truck Rentals (they rent out 3/4 & 1 ton work trucks). I wanted to get a 3/4 truck, but the only thing they had available was a 1 ton dually, Dodge Ram 3500. Woooo!! That thing was nice and it pulled our trailer and tractor like it wasn’t behind the truck at all!

The plan was to get up, eat breakfast and get out to the property all by 1pm. I can tell you now, that it didn’t quite happen that way. I needed to run to the store to get tie downs, a pintle trailer hitch, and to top it off Herman’s battery was dead! Then I found myself going back and forth to the store! On top of that the trailer is at my sister-in-laws house and the tractor is at mine. Needless to say, after we got all of our pieces put together, we did not get out there until about 4:30pm.

Progress

Overall, it was a successful trip. After all of the frustrations of getting everything out there, it turned out to be a fun trip. One thing we did learn was that we have a LOT more property than we thought! We couldn’t finish the pasture portion in one day, due to time, equipment issues and of course inexperience. However, by the end of the day I was finally getting the hang of things, but then it was time to say good-bye. All-in-all, it was still a good day. Below are some more photos of all the fun.

Since then, we’ve been back out twice with lots more adventure and believe me it has been some adventures. Deidra will be sharing that one with you all, so stay tuned and thanks for reading!!