Tractor Pull
I interview everyone with a tractor and they say the same thing: I love my tractor.
Swifty Corwin dropped off two loads of pine chips a few weeks ago from the job he was doing at our neighbors through the woods, Paul and Robbie. I wandered over while that was going on with the idea that Swifty would be looking for a home for the chips, as most of the foresters are when they have an order to cut down more than a tree or two. The job next door was several trees, mostly white pine, a couple of them upwards of eighty or ninety feet tall.
So, first off, I was wanting to get Swifty’s attention amid all the commotion that goes along with a big tree job. The chainsaws that are doing the work, the tractor that is hauling logs and brush relying on a hydraulic claw, the crane being used for the really heavy lifting and to hoist a lumberjack to the tops of the trees so they can be taken apart in pieces; and the chipper, the loudest noise instrument, which chews tree limbs to tiny bits, shooting them into a dump truck. Swifty seemed delighted with my proposal when we got near enough to each other to be heard. I got two thumbs up.
Secondly, though, a large tree-clearing job is all action and adventure, as I have somewhat just described. Guys dangling near treetops by rope and the crash and thunder of big pines hitting the ground, plus the nerve-wracking proximity of buildings and electrical wires. It is kind of primal. Not at all like watching someone write computer code or even build a house. Precise, sometimes tedious activities. I have never seen a beaver take down a tree. I wonder if it would generate the same earthy, muscular feeling. Like fire. I can stand around and watch a fire, even in the fireplace, with the same primal intensity that I can watch a couple of people fell a two-ton tree, feeling the weight of it in the soles of my feet when it hits the ground.
After making my bargain with Swifty, I hung around the action for a while with Paul, wishing I had my grandchildren nearby, particularly—given his age—the three-and-a-half-year-old. He would be captivated and, if I were holding him up, his arms might be wrapped around my neck for security. Like a koala baby. Primal.
Back to the wood chips. At the outset, the two loads were piled higher than my head, maybe by a foot. I have whittled (no pun) that down by about half, loading them shovel-full by shovel-full into the green wagon of my John Deere lawn tractor, driving them to where they are needed, as mulch around the rhododendrons and azaleas and along the path to the pond, and spreading them with a garden rake. Which is fine. But I wish I had a bigger tractor with a bucket on the front. Less shoveling and easier on the back, sure, but about half the time required to complete the work compared to how I am doing it now.
Neal Young has a great line in his live, Rust Never Sleeps album: “When I get big I’m going to get an electric guitar. When I get real big.” This approximates my ambition for a proper tractor. I interview everyone with a tractor and they say the same thing: love my tractor. A friend described her husband’s affair with his tractor by saying he would set the dinner table with it if he could.
I love my truck. I could easily love a tractor. The thing is, tractors are expensive, even used tractors. And then, where do we put it? The local John Deere dealer explained that tractors are outdoor equipment. They can be left outdoors. What about winter, I asked. “It’s winter now,” he replied (as it was, the time I visited). “Please notice we’re outside with all the tractors.”
Early on, when we moved into our pond cabin to live full-time after exiting the innkeeping business, there were many improvements we felt needed to be made, inside and out. These items pushed the idea of a tractor to the periphery. It is creeping back. Mud season is a prime reason because with a proper tractor, one with a front-end loader, and an attached landscape rake or grader, we stand a chance of reclaiming the driveway that gets washed away in heavy rain and pulverized by the tires of not just our vehicles, but FedEx and UPS trucks, the propane deliveries and, most powerfully, utility trucks that show up (six times this winter and early spring, I believe) to restore power. By necessity, they drive over everything, including the softening fields, rocking back and forth a couple of times to unstuck themselves.
The John Deere dealer suggested we could do without a backhoe, which he said was the least used piece of tractor equipment. Customers try to return them. But we could use a backhoe to cut swales to catch the driveway run-off before it goes into the woods or stream. For slightly more, the backhoe could include the “thumb” accessory allowing me, I would think, to grab logs or brush, moving them here and there. Very helpful given our wooded environs. There are claw grapples available, which might be the better option, given how much downed wood there is every year. In that regard, there is also a small woodchipper attachment.
What about a snowplow? Hmmm. Include a snowplow in the package and drop the snowplow guy. That sounds financially rational. Someone I know has a pallet fork attachment, useful for getting underneath heavy objects, although I believe he uses it mainly to create a portable work surface by dropping a few boards across and raising it to a level where he is not having to bend over to, say, sharpen the teeth on his chainsaw. Brilliant. How did people survive before?
They sell post-hole diggers. There is no fencing around the property, an obvious consequence of not having a tractor with a post-hole digger.
I would like a canopy for protection from the hot sun. I can clip a fan to the corner. Cup holders, I assume come standard. I have not seen anything about icemakers or stereo equipment, but how can there not be? I can put a dog bed in the front loader as a way to keep Huckleberry from running circles around the equipment while I am dragging the field. Some farmer has to have thought about that for his dog. I will ask around.
As my father always said when wish lists appeared before him, "Christmas is coming." It was his way of saying, let’s move on.