This was written a long time ago. We now have two newish tractors that usually work. At least they take turns not working... so far.
April 1994 TRACTOR ANGST
It is a good thing I milk by hand. Johnny and I would never keep a milking machine operating. We are mechanically challenged. To illustrate, let me tell you about our relationship with tractors.
Old Gray is an ancient Ford Ferguson that has never, in the fifteen years we have owned it, started on its own. Old Gray insists on company. Unless its battery is connected to a friend’s battery, it just sits there.
Once started, Old Gray belches and bucks, loudly complaining and, sooner or later, dying. Sometimes we get four or five manure loads spread before Old Gray rattles to a determined stop. But that tractor is a heckuva lot more agreeable than Old Blue. Old Blue is just plain mean.
Johnny bought Old Blue, a prehistoric Ford, half a dozen years ago because it had a bucket on the front with a hydraulic lift. “We’ll load the manure spreader with Old Blue and pull the spreader with Old Gray,” Johnny explained. “It will save us from hand loading.”
Not once have we loaded the entire manure spreader with Old Blue. First the hydraulic hose broke, spewing hydraulic fluid all over the pasture. Once that was fixed, Old Blue quit running altogether. We hired a mechanic to fix what was ailing. He did. Said it worked fine. We didn’t get twenty feet beyond the tractor shed before it died and refused our resuscitation attempts.
Just when we were ready to call the tractor undertaker, or whoever picks up dead tractors, Old Blue would roar into life and load half the manure spreader. We would think, “Boy this sure is easier than loading by hand. We’d better keep this tractor.” Then Old Blue would break some critical part of its anatomy and sit idle for months until we had the money, time, or fortitude to repair it.
Last fall I was cutting the thistles out of the pasture with Old Gray when the tractor suddenly began smoking and coughing. I shut it off quickly before the whole thing went up in flames. Debris had clogged the air cooling system. After cleaning out the mess, I hiked to the barn for water for the radiator and then back to the tractor. Of course, Old Gray would not start. It was lonely.
So off I trudged again over fields and through gates to the shed where Old Blue languished. Miracle of miracles, the cranky thing started right up. Just before we reached Old Gray, Old Blue’s hydraulic cable, which I was not using, exploded, gushing fluid all over the place. Simultaneously, Old Blue died. And refused to start.
The two tractors were as far from the house as they could get. No tractor ever quits within easy walking distance of help.
“That’s it,” I told Johnny. “I want a decent tractor.”
“We can’t afford a decent tractor.”
“I can’t afford a nervous breakdown.”
The mechanic fixed the hydraulic line and moved both tractors to the shed, where they have been until this spring. During a break in the weather, Johnny started Old Blue and headed for the manure pile. The tractor saw that enormous pile of goat manure and expired.
“That’s it,” said Johnny. “Old Blue is going to the auction.”
The annual farm equipment auction is in March. We made arrangements with a neighbor to use his flatbed. Or try to.
Old Blue was waiting in the tractor shed on the appointed day, driven there in one of its rare good moods. Now, of course, it would not start, not even with a jump from Johnny’s van. “I’ll tow it into the sun with Old Gray,” Johnny said. “It starts better after it’s warm.”
So he tried to pull the van up to Old Gray to jump-start it as usual, but the ground was muddy and the van got stuck. As he tried to rock free, the van died. By this time, my mild-mannered husband was kicking things and hollering.
I was in the barn, milking goats and trying to stay out of the way. Johnny trudged to the house for the car, jump-started the van and pulled it forward, where it mired down again. I left the goats for the moment and went to see if I could help.
While Johnny jumped Old Gray from the car, I tried rocking the van back and forth. Little by little, it began to move. Then, suddenly, it shot backwards.
Knowing the van would get stuck if I stopped, I didn’t. We leaped backwards, slipping this way and that, just missing Johnny, the car and the gas tank in the tractor shed. Careening past the barn, the van came dangerously close to sliding into the pond before finally reaching solid ground. Things were looking up.
After hooking the tractors together, Johnny pulled me and Old Blue up the driveway. There was no time to let Old Blue warm in the sunshine; we needed to get the dang thing started and to the sale. I put it in second and let up on the clutch. Yes! The engine came alive. Johnny climbed on. Old Blue died.
“You try it,” Johnny said in disgust. Usually the tractors cooperate much better for Johnny than for me. I am more severely mechanically challenged. But today everything seemed determined to thwart him. So I pushed the starter on Old Blue. It purred to life. Johnny sighed and took off for the neighbor’s loading ramp and flatbed, forty tractor minutes away.
But Old Blue wasn’t through with him.
Halfway up the loading ramp, the tractor died. Try as he might, Johnny could not get it restarted. The neighbor hooked his pickup to the front of the miserable tractor and towed Johnny all over his farm; down lanes, though pastures, round and round they went. Old Blue coughed, sputtered and lapsed into an apparently permanent silence.
By this time, Johnny was in, to put it mildly, a very bad mood. He called our mechanic, threatening, pleading and finally driving over and picking him up. The mechanic pulled Old Blue’s choke out a fraction: the diabolical tractor roared to life.
Old Blue is finally gone. Do I feel guilty for dumping the cantankerous beast on some poor soul at the farm auction? No. I’m convinced that tractor doesn’t hate everyone. Old Blue has a mean streak that makes it only pick on people who are mechanically challenged. People like Johnny and me.
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