Tag: Tractor

Heel Kicks and Hitch Pins

~ sanebishop ~ 2 Comments

There is a certain physicality needed to farm–namely, the ability to kick. However, as a demographic group, Southerners have tended to be suspicious of kicking, likely due to its close association with the sport we call “soccer.” There are many reasons why southerners distrust soccer. Some fear it’s a scheme of the global new world order, others believe it’s unnatural for a species with opposable thumbs, and others dislike the tall socks. Whatever the reason, soccer has never really caught on in the South. It even ranks lower than other niche sports, like Nascar and competitive eating. 

I, for one, am a fan of competitive eating and Nascar and soccer. All three sports have virtues. All three sports foster skills that have applications to farm life. For instance, gobbling up large amounts of meat in a single sitting can free up freezer space after you catch a trophy largemouth bass on Friday and need to thwart aesthetic decay before taking it to the taxidermist on Monday. The ability to make left turns and drive continuously in circles, without losing interest or dehydrating oneself due to excessive drooling, is fundamental to many common farm tasks, such as plowing, drilling, and bush hogging. Farm life is rife with kicking, in various forms and for various functions.

Take, for instance, your common shovel kick. Any ole person can stomp a shovel, but a former soccer player has a competitive advantage in a drought. Why a farmer might be trying to dig a hole in a drought is irrelevant. It could be to plant a plant, dig a well, bake a potato, or dig his own grave–it doesn’t matter. What matters is form and the downward thrust needed to penetrate hardened red clay. Someone who is skilled in the movement and manipulations of the leg, who can stomp efficiently and powerfully without tiring and without resorting to jumping up and down on the shovel (a desperate and inefficient move often attempted by former basketball players), will be more drought resistant as a farmer. 

Another example: anybody who has ever had chickens also understands the importance of footwork. Despite having tiny brains, chickens instinctively know which way you want them to go. They use this instinct to go the opposite direction. Why did the chicken cross the road? Because a farmer was on the other side. To prevent chickens from moving against the grain and going against your wishes, developing a good trap will give you a leg up. In fact, a leg up is a good way to describe a trap, a soccer move in which you hold your leg up and to the side to slow and stop the movements of an incoming soccer ball or domesticated fowl. Remember, the goal is merely to slow and stop the rogue movement of the chicken, not to punt it, so again the soccer player has a foot up, even against a farmer who is a former punter. 

David Beckham demonstrate proper trap form. Imagine a chicken where the soccer ball is.

The trap should not be confused with the slide tackle, a more advanced soccer move best used to play defense against fleeing pigs. If pigs evade your slide tackle, you’re better off acquiring the services of a former cross country runner. Although they may not be experts in kicking, they know how to run across hill and dale, which is the primary skill needed when pursuing pigs. 

A slide tackle. Imagine a pig where the soccer ball is.

One final example: The heel kick is used in soccer to pass the ball backwards and commonly used in farming to unhook equipment from tractors. Simply raise your foot up, over, and inside the three-point hitch arm. Then, using your knee as a fulcrum, swing your foot backward, and wallop the inner hitch arm with your heel. This will either dislodge the hitch receiver from the pin or dislodge your foot from your leg. If the latter, soccer players have a considerable advantage because most are ambidextrous with their feet, meaning the loss of a dominant foot would have less downside for a farmer who is a former soccer player. 

A Heel Kick. Imagine a three-point hitch arm where the soccer ball is.

I could go on and on, but the point here is soccer is a valuable sport that can be used to develop skills, specifically kicking skills, that can be beneficial to farmers. For that reason, maybe one day soccer will gain acceptance and popularity in rural areas. Until then, please keep my secret that I like soccer between the two of us. If it got out, it could really hurt my reputation in the farming community.

That’s Farming

~ sanebishop ~ 9 Comments

I am not sure what’s the bigger bane of my existence, dead batteries or flat tires. Both have a way of taunting me that is entirely unbecoming of inanimate objects. Just yesterday a tractor battery went, “chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, click” which translated into English means, “You dimwit farmer, did you really think you were going to quickly crank up and go get a hay bale, then be back inside ten minutes later eating supper with your family? Think again, sucker.”

Ten minutes later, I not only had one dead tractor battery but two. I had now drained the battery in the other tractor by trying to jump off the first tractor. That meant I had to get my truck involved. Thankfully, my truck battery has proven more reliable than my tractor batteries, meaning it only dies bi-annually instead of annually. With the truck, I finally resuscitated the tractor and could now get a roll of hay for the cows. So twenty minutes fooling with batteries, ten minutes fooling with a hay tarp, five minutes opening and closing gates, ten minutes chasing a cow that snuck through a gate, and five minutes cutting strings off the hay bale equals thoroughly cold food when I finally made it back inside to eat supper. 

“What took so long?” my wife asked. 

“Dead battery,” I said. 

“You’ll probably want to stick that in the microwave,” she said. “and by the way, can you check the air in my tires. My light came on today when I was driving home from work.”

Alas, a poor dirt farmer like me basically spends six hours a day sleeping, eight hours at work to pay for my farming addiction, and my remaining hours trying to keep my farm from falling apart, which isn’t easy when unruly batteries and tires are involved. 

I take consolation in the fact some farmers have it worse than me. My neighbor keeps a battalion of broken-down tractors in the weeds just to keep a couple of tractors running and operational. How he remembers which parts he has already robbed off of which tractor is beyond me. He more or less mimics the frantic searching method of a bird dog, bobbing in and out of overgrown tractor thickets, to flush a needed part. On a good Saturday morning, he can bag his daily limit of parts and have them marinating in WD-40 by lunchtime. On a bad Saturday morning, he’ll have to go an actual tractor dealership to acquire his needed part, at which point someone will need to resuscitate him from sticker shock, but that’s farming.

Agriculturalists Anonymous: The New AA

~ sanebishop ~ 1 Comment

Many have tried to quit farming. Many have relapsed a few weeks later by ogling a new tractor. If you ever see me riding around half-naked on a shiny new steed, you know I experienced a moment of weakness and lost the shirt off my back at a tractor dealership (and possibly my socks too if it was a John Deere dealership). In one of the great high points of my farming career, I once escaped a John Deere dealership only a $1.75 poorer. Still, the little washer was ten times overpriced, but previously I had never left there without the eerie feeling that I needed to sell a kidney.

If you ask me, tractor dealerships ought to own up to their moral responsibility and create a no-sale policy for customers showing signs of farming withdrawal. I know that’s probably wishful thinking, but if casinos set aside a portion of their proceeds to help those who eat, breathe, and play slot machines, then tractor companies ought to help those who eat, breathe, and play on heavy machines. Tractor companies don’t see it that way though. In fact, the manager of our local John Deere dealership once had the audacity to tell me his “primary responsibility was selling and not not-selling.” Talk about moral depravity.

To be honest, I’ve never been tempted much by shining new equipment (I’m more of a rust guy), but that doesn’t mean I don’t have other farming faults. For instance, at rock bottom, I once had more calves per acre than blades of grass, right out in the open for everyone to see. One of my neighbors made light of the situation, saying such insensitive stuff as, “Stephen, can I practice my short game at your place? Your pasture looks like a putting green.”

Any attempts at going cold turkey from calf buying were made difficult by the fact that I worked at a government agriculture office. Farmers would enter the office, manure wafting from their boots, and wax poetic about the beautiful weather, all while I was confined doing pointless government paperwork. At day’s end, I’d drive home despondent and then drown my woes in the bottle, that is until Natalie finally hid them all. Eventually I did find her hiding place and quickly started bottle feeding more calves.

The point, though, is farming addictive, which is probably a good thing—because if it wasn’t, I suspect we’d all be starving.

Tractor Tire Technicians Without Borders

~ sanebishop ~ 13 Comments

I was contemplating deep thoughts the other day when it dawned on me that nothing good and pure and wholesome in this world ever hisses. Can you imagine a fair young maiden hissing? No, I don’t think so: hissing is what wicked witches do, as well as rattlesnakes and possums and rapidly deflating rear tractor tires. In fact, if you ever want to ponder the mysteries of the universe, I suggest you skip the Tibetan meditation music and greatest hits of Enya and instead add “Sounds of Hissing Tractor Tires” to your playlist. With the cost of tires now, you’ll be in an existential crisis in no time. 

And rear tractor tires are more than just a financial encumbrance–they’re a half-ton encumbrance. If while changing them, they happen to fall over on you, someone will need to scrape you off the ground with a spatula. In bygone days, this problem was easily solved by requesting the services of a professional tire man with a boom truck and good liability insurance. Apparently, however, most professional tire men these days have determined it’s not worth the possibility of getting crushed to death by another man’s tractor tire to make money. Even Dan the Tire Man has gone soft and given up tractor tire calls. Dan said, “Ain’t got the staff to do farm calls no more–nobody wants to work.”

And that got me thinking: where are all the altruistic millennials when you need them? It appears they’re so busy creating pie-in-the-sky nonprofits that they can’t be bothered to help farmers with real nonprofitable endeavors, like manhandling a rear tractor tire. I was at a conference this past weekend, and there was actually a young “aspiring” farmer walking around the conference barefoot (the conference was in Asheville)–I kid you not, he was shunning footwear in public to help save the world somehow. When Bilbo Baggins came up to my booth, he bandied about all the common alternative agriculture catchphrases like “regenerative methods” and “food sovereignty” and “ecological production” and I just tried my best to keep a straight face and not make eye contact with his feet. In hindsight, I should have invited him to help me change my rear tractor tire, at which point he would have learned an important lesson: aspiring farmers should own a pair of steel-toe boots. 

That said, if you know of any millennials out there who are still searching for their life’s purpose and are thinking about starting a nonprofit, may I suggest: “Tractor Tire Technicians without Borders.” It would truly be a worthy cause.

Never Walk Behind Pepper

~ sanebishop ~ 10 Comments

For those who’d like to donate to a worthy charity, may I suggest the MFTTF, the Misfit Farmer’s Tractor Tire Fund. All contributions go directly to my bank account, which has been depleted this summer by the disintegrating structural integrity of rubber on my farm. It’s got to the point that I now look at the Amish’s horse-drawn implements with envy, and I have a lifelong fear of horses. 

Of course, my wife dismisses equinophobia. Years ago, when we purchased her old family farmstead, she was actually excited that Ringo, a Missouri Foxtrotter, was thrown in for free and ridiculed my general life philosophy that “All horses should be feared, and free horses should be feared always.” 

Haunting me were childhood memories of my cousins’ lunatic steeds: Red, Pepper, and the pony (I forget the pony’s name, though its memories are largely the most traumatic). But I do remember the pony rearing and galloping full speed toward a barbed wire fence with my wailing cousin atop. She looked like a miniature Annie Oakley. At one point, her cowboy hat, attached by chinstraps, fully deployed like a parachute and was the only thing slowing the runaway pony. Soon thereafter, my cousin toppled off the side, and the pony skidded to halt in front of the fence, which at that point was the best possible outcome.

I’m not sure whatever happened to that pony—I lost touch with it after it nearly killed my cousin, but I suspect it was probably donated to another family who needed a good free pony.

Unlike the pony, Big Red and Pepper occasionally proved trustworthy enough for excursions outside their pasture. Though I have no particular horror stories of Pepper, the frequent warning “Never walk behind Pepper” still reverberates in my mind. So much so, the pepper shaker stays hidden in a cabinet, lest I walk past the kitchen table and flinch. 

Once, my family took Pepper and Big Red on a horseback-riding trip to Sugar Loaf Mountain. Sugar Loaf was really more mound than mountain, but being in the coastal plain where everything was flat, the abnormal increase in elevation achieved mountain status. I viewed much of the surrounding countryside while performing a full split atop Big Red who was intent on wandering wherever he pleased, his jockey experiencing too much paralysis to control the reins. To continue his journey unencumbered, Red eventually reared up and dropped me off on a pine tree. 

I’ve never been on a horse since, but at this point horse shoes seem a lot cheaper than tractor tires.