I would like to say that I have my tractor out sitting in the shed or at least that it is on the farm, but all that I can say is that my tractor is in the drive way. And, I’m glad it is there! As you can tell from the picture above (it looks like I’m going fast) I was pretty happy to have it home.
On Saturday afternoon my dad stopped by after spending a day working on a tractor at my uncles to unload some fence posts for us (nothing like getting hand me down posts!). Since he had to go South and could easily swing past my other Uncle’s farm where my tractor is I decided to hitch a ride and then bring home our new (to us) Farmall 450. The tractor was about 23 or 24 miles away from our home and it was getting late so we took off right away (only stopping to get some gas for the tractor).
Once we made it down there we cobbled up a holder for my slow moving vehicle sign and I took off. I was going to take some back roads home, but after the WET weather we have had lately the gravel roads are a bumpy mess. So, I ended up driving on the highway and enjoying a nice leisurely ride on a cool evening. I suppose in some parts of the country this would have been a weird sight, but in Iowa it is just par for the course. In fact our state hosts two major tractor rides (WHO and WMT) that are all about riding old tractors just for the fun of it.
Now that I have our tractor here in town I’m going to use it to clean up a couple of trees that need some limbs pulled out still from this past winters ice storms and then I will take it out to the farm to get to work mowing and pulling out the old fence. I will keep you updated on my tractor skills 🙂
I liked the part about Iowans being used to tractors on the highway. When we are driving cattle down the highway the locals drive slowly through, and the city drivers are afraid to enter the herd to get through, and are preoccupied with avoiding the cow pies. I was passing through Bulgaria on my way to Turkey last year and I saw signs on the interstate saying no horse drawn wagons were allowed (wagon with a slash through it), that really made me laugh!
There’s nothing like the wind in your hair and the smell of diesel exhaust on a cool spring day!
I am always amazed at how different the countryside looks when you are driving a tractor down the road. Even if it is a road that you may have driven down a hundred times, you always notice all kinds of new details and features in the land alongside the road.