Some recent pics from around the farm:
Posts Tagged ‘john deere’
17 Sep
On bonfires, boy scouts, and tractors…
When I was a Boy Scout, like many of my comrades, I liked to poke around the fire. In survival school, we called the fire the “Survival Television” – throw a branch in or rearrange the logs, and you’ve changed the channel.
My wife said today that a bonfire on a crisp Fall day is one of life’s true pleasures, and I agree with her. So today we got a burn permit from the Fire Department and spent a bit of time burning a pile of pin cherries (we’ve been slowly clearing them out of our back pasture, as they’re poisonous to horses and goats) as well as some more of the debris left by Irene a couple weeks ago.
Fires are just as fun as they used to be.
But now I have a tractor, and I have to say that playing with a fire with a tractor has got to be one of the coolest things grownup boys get to do (besides using the tractor to knock the trees down in the first place, and then the chainsaw to cut them up). Here’s a video of dropping one of the pin cherry stumps into the bonfire.
Life is good.
3 Sep
Buying the Farm
If our assignment to New Hampshire broke down one of the last barriers to horse ownership, the house we found to live in sealed the deal.
Nestled in the wooded hills of South Central New Hampshire on just under 15 acres, it included a four-stall pole barn with a large run-out, another older barn now serving as an equipment shed, and four other small buildings, the purpose of which wasn’t clear to us when we looked at the house online.
About 3 acres was pasture in various states of improvement, with the rest comprising a small tree farm.
It ended up being the last property we saw on our househunting trip, and after we toured the property (between snowstorms, of course), we fell in love with it.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, those out-buildings? Emu huts. The previous owner was in the process of selling the last two members of his breeding stock, and had evidently been hatching and raising up to 50 at a time.
(Previous owner with a new emu egg)
Very soon after returning, we had negotiated a deal for both the house and other equipment (including the tractor and attachments), and dubbed the property “The Flying T Ranch” with a nod back to our experiences in Texas.
We had a house, we had a farm, we had a tractor, and now…
…Oh, I didn’t talk about the tractor, did I?
We know that horses are one of the apples of my daughters’ eyes. A tractor, though… that spoke to me and my son. A real-deal tractor in John Deere green.
All you tractor folks want the specs, so here they are: 48hp turbodiesel John Deere 4320. Hydrostatic transmission. 400x loader with bucket. York Rake with grader. Bush Hog. Near brand-new 8’ snowplow with hydraulic angle. Filled tires. 4-wheel drive. Aux lights. Heck, it even has cruise control. Overkill for our little farm. Oh yeah. When I go to Home Depot these days with my youngest, he asks if he can sit in the “miniature tractors,” and I love it.
We had a farm. We had a tractor. Soon we were going to have horses as well.