My husband is a tractor man.

As long as I have known him, he’s been buying little John Deere tractors, tinkering with them, and then passing them on to new owners in a little better state.  For a long time, there was always an extra one in the garage.  He seems to have moved through that phase (mostly because our life is too busy now for tinkering on project tractors), but he kept telling me we needed a bigger tractor with a loader, preferably a John Deere.

Well we finally managed to make it happen.  A couple weeks ago we went and picked it up.  It barely fit on the trailer but Josh can drive anything into any space.  His aunt always says he could thread a car into the eye of a needle.

Our first project to try out the loader was driving t-posts for my fence project.  Wow!  So much easier.  I stuck the post in a bit and got it level then Josh pushed it down with the bucket, pausing so I could measure the height and make slight adjustments, then driving it the rest of the way in.  Each post took just a minute or two and no one ended the afternoon with jello arms from pounding in t-posts.

Our next use for the tractor was as a ladder.  We made this handy box that fits onto the pallet forks.  One of us sits on the tractor and raises and lowers it while the other works.  Here we were using it to cut some ventilation into the side of the truck box so we can move the baby chicks out there from the brooder.  I’m looking forward to having this when it’s time to harvest the pears too.  That task will be so much easier with a platform to work on!

Upcoming tasks that I’m looking forward to with this new piece of equipment at hand are leveling low spots in the yard (not moving dirt by hand), turning the compost pile and distributing compost, and tilling the new garden beds.

Last Sunday, at family dinner, Josh’s aunt got a lesson in driving the tractor from our oldest boy, McGregor.  Robyn helps me at markets and is slowly becoming quite the farm girl!  Check her out on the tractor.  I can see it now: this summer she’ll be taking the littles on Sunday wagon rides around the farm.