Saturday, April 13, 2013

Wasted Daze

After raining on Friday evening, the morning dawned clear and calm. A gorgeous spring day!
He’s been searching high and low, all the internets, etc., for a tractor to be used and kept at our place in West Virginia. Did not visit our property one single time last year. Maxx has never been there. He wants a tractor, able to mow large amounts of grassland in short order and not get stuck in the soft spots, so we can trailer up there on a Saturday morning with our LQ trailer and the boys (dogs and cat) and camp out for the weekend. I have not been keen on this idea because there are so many things to get done here, like fencing in the northeast pasture and putting a cover over the landscaper's bins.
In West Virginia there is a two-stall shed row and four 10x10 uncovered corrals. There are also two barns on the property, but no house. Nothing is fenced in, we use upgraded portable corrals because KC would rather take the hit and walk out of it, then stand in mud. Can’t blame him, right?
We have never brought the boys up to West Virginia since construction of the shed row and corrals. The corrals are unfinished, the electric is incomplete to the shed row. We have another couple Saturday’s worth of work on this project before it would be ready for prime time. Time being the operative word, since we don’t have any.
He’s gotten this Bee in his bonnet about using the property (we pay minimal taxes and electric) and hosting weekends of riding with the group. There are other camps in the area, but we’ve never stayed there because we have our own place adjacent to the George Washington National Forest, with miles and days of riding.
We got a tractor when we originally purchased the property. This was before the internet was invented, Craigslist and eBay were not even a thought, much less a possibility. The want ads were few, if any. With this kind of purchase you need to be an insider, and we were not. We could not find a tractor anywhere, had no choice but to buy new.
He spent lots of time looking for the perfect tractor for our place, which needed lots of work. We got a Ford 1320 with a front-end loader, a brush hog, and a box-scrapper. I immediately purchased a flat-bed trailer to haul this and the implements.

Fast forward to now:
The internet is full of tractors for sale, with a good share of scammers. Poorly produced pictures, selling for a friend, don’t know anything about it, etc. One thing we learned is that our 1994 Ford 1320 is worth almost what we paid for it.
On Saturday we traveled to Taneytown to look at a John Deere with a 6-foot mower deck and Ag tires. We took the dogs with us, too. The price had dropped three times. Unfortunately will never get those lost hours and diesel fuel back in my life. Could have, should have gone riding instead. The tires were shot, which would have been a $500+ value and he didn’t offer to bring the price down.
After all that I went to the grocery store and then applied another coat of DryLock oil-based paint to the laundry room walls because I want to go riding on Sunday. He gave both dogs a bath, too.

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