Tractor

One piece of equipment that makes our work easier is our tractor.  We didn't have it the first few years we had our farm.  Then when Tom's mother died, she left us a little bit of money.  Rather than just put it in the bank, I urged Tom to buy a tractor with it.  He looked around at several different brands and finally settled on a Kubota tractor. 

He also bought a roto-tiller implement to go on the back.  It works off the PTO shaft of the tractor and does a great job of working the ground up getting it ready to plant.  He also bought a front-end loader (FEL for short).   Here 's a picture of the tractor (with me driving it).  You can see the roto-tiller on the back and the FEL on the front.

Today I used the FEL to haul some straw bales and compost from one side of the property to where Tom was mulching tomatoes.   The straw bales have been setting outside all winter and were wet and very heavy.  It would have been back-breaking work to move them without the tractor. 

Although we've had the tractor for several years, I'm just now learning to drive it and use the implements.  It takes a little practice to learn how to maneuver things.  But I felt like I made a lot of progress today.   I learned that you have to line up with whatever it is that you are going to pick up with the FEL, lower the FEL just to ground level and slowly drive forward scooping up the object and raising the FEL in one motion.  Here's what the last pile of compost looked like from the driver's seat as I was lining up to scoop it up.

You have to keep the FEL up high while you are driving so you can see where you are going.  Then there is a lever to the right of the steering wheel that you use to raising and lower the FEL bucket and maneuver it to pick things up. 

The tractor has a "clutch" that you have to push down to start it.  But, then you don't use the clutch after that because normally you don't shift gears.  There is one pedal that you push to go forward and another one you push to go backward.  The tractor only has 3 speeds....high, medium and low.  Tom keeps it set on medium most of the time and medium is pretty slow!  But, that's okay because it is a very powerful machine and you don't want to go racing around too fast or you could do some pretty serious damage. 

Here's a picture of the "dash" board.