Tractor talk and fall farming

Bill hooked up the brush hog for me Sunday, so I've had a great week playing farmer. Well, actually last week I started the fall farming operation with the Rhino by hooking up a pasture harrow and dragging a couple of fields.

As usual, I never quite know what I'm doing, but I do my best, and if luck will have it, something might turn out right. In the case of the harrowing, things went pretty well. The previous owners dumped piles of old alfalfa and other clinging stuff like rocks and vines around the pastures. Those piles have been sitting there, interrupting otherwise tall, lush grass and snuffing off whatever's below them all summer, so I dragged the fields to break them up.

The effort worked well enough to scatter them a bit and make it easy to come out with a pitchfork and scatter the stuff a little further for fertilizing purposes. During the process, I did get the harrow caught on a hose which runs clear across the field to another pasture. So, I pried it out and stuck it in a safer place to avoid any more attacks from the mad woman in the rhino.

Of course, I must digress and spew some hose-hating rhetoric. How many out there have uttered a profanity or two when working with a hose? Am I the only one who owns perverse hoses? My long rubber snakes, with all their patched parts and duct tape have historically have done everything hosely possible to make my life miserable.

If there's any object within five miles of my network of hoses, they'll search it out, grab onto it like a leech and refuse to let go. I usually make that discovery when I'm at least half a mile away from said connection. In most cases, I'm walking along to the next watering spot, blissfully minding my business and suddenly, the force takes hold, brings me to a sudden stop and the physics of the situation drags me backward much like we see those calves in the rodeo events.

Though I know it's in vain, after cussing, I turn around and tug, tug, tug, but there's no tugging procedure from afar adequate enough to release the hose from its latest lifelong attachment. My only recourse is to drop the end I've been carrying, walk back and lift it from its "entrapment" and move on. I can't think of many hose-moving operations in my experience that go smoothly and without incident.

I've never yet figured out what I ever did to hoses to deserve this, but I did figure out the day before yesterday why the water barrel for the horses was so empty, even though I'd faithfully filled it for four days in a row. Fortunately, Rambo and Casey's necks were still long enough to get to the bottom of the barrel to quench their thirst.

I solved the mystery by walking the hoseline and discovering that I had inflicted mortal wounds last Friday on that section which had come looking for trouble with the harrow. I also learned that every time I filled the water tank, I didn't fill the water tank. Instead, I was watering the field, about midway across where hose severing had occurred. It now appears to me that I never get any slack on future hose missions.

But the alfalfa was distributed, and the next project involved cutting some of the tall grass in the pastures near the road. Everybody kept telling me I need some goats, but I just told them that will not happen. So, I fired up the '56 Ford and its attached brush hog and headed for the field. Brush hogging went well until the beekeepers pulled up and parked at the field across the road. Annie Dog, who monitors most of my outdoor activities, decided she needed to go bark at them.

So, I turned off the tractor, waved, said hello, and implored Annie Dog to get back here right now! About five minutes later, this old dog, on her own terms, came back. During that time, I tried to start the tractor up. It only starts in neutral. I had it in another gear. Just like the hose that refuses to loose itself, the tractor gearshift refused to move.

I figured if I disengaged the brush hog, maybe that would relieve the tension on the gearshift. No dice. It was just as determined to stay put. After a few tries at each procedure, I was feeling embarrassed. There were heavy equipment workers to the south of me and beekeepers to the east. And, I was sitting on this tractor fondling its parts and getting nowhere. Finally, Annie gave me an excuse to take her back to the house and think about it.

While inside, I received a call from Bob Gooby who was looking for a vet's number. I told him I'd give him the number if he could tell me how to get my tractor gearshift unstuck. After all, 45 years ago, I'd gotten another tractor---or maybe it was the same one come to think of it. After all, we did buy this Ford from my dad. Anyway, as a curious adolescent eager to drive illegally, I'd gotten it stuck in the fence after the only gear I'd been able to manage was reverse.

Of course, my parents were gone at the time, so I'd summoned a couple of strangers driving down the road and asked them to put it back where it belonged before my parents came home. Well, they did their best, but not soon enough. The afterward wrath led to a story and to my never being trusted near tractors again----until my adult life. Now, there was a chance that my banishment would occur once more via my husband who wasn't going to be happy if the gearshift was terminally stuck.

Bob told me go back and to rattle a few items, like the brush hog and maybe things would loosen up. I learned quickly that brush hogs don't rattle around easily. I could not budge that huge piece of metal. So, I climbed back on the tractor and acted like I knew exactly what I was doing (after all, the audiences were still there), and miraculously, on first try, the gearshift finally let go. The tractor started up, and I continued on through the field and even another in brush hogging heaven.

It was only later that I announced to Bill that I'd had a few problems with the gearshift. Better to tell AFTER problem has been solved than during. He's also heard in a side conversation about the hose dissection in the other field.

So, fall farming goes on at the Lovestead, and Bill can keep praying a lot and scratching his head every time I fire up another piece of equipment.