With Ears Like Eyes

The adventure to get my new hay tractor was interesting.

600+ miles round trip, but 200 miles into that trip the brakes on the trailer decided to hang up and drag. I went over the 4th weekend so no shop along the entire way was open except for a $500min after hours service call from the one we could get ahold of. What would have been a "leave Thursday at midnight and get home Friday by supper" turned into "leave Thursday at midnight, get home Saturday morning at about 4am".

A chained up axel, tearing apart wheel hubs in gas station parking lots, a broken board on the trailer deck after loading, power naps in Perkins parking lots, and some amazing night views later - the girl is home and ready to get out to the hay field this week.

Chatting with the guy I bought the tractor from was refreshing. He's on the same hair brained path I'm on. Starting a commercial livestock operation from scratch, while everyone is telling him it's impossible in this day and age to start a farm/ranch from nothing. To give up. You have to be born with it, ect - and then proving everyone wrong.

We had a good laugh over buying broken equipment to fix and get started out on. Late night runs out of state after work to go pick up implements and needed things to make the farm work. Running equipment that's 50-60 years older than your neighbor's, the long hours after your day jobs, and barter deals to rent land. He's happy that his hay tractor is going to someone who's doing the same thing and proving others wrong too. Because yes, I've heard it all. To give up before even thinking about trying. I'll die before I give up. I'll be damned if I didn't do everything in my power to try and bring back the family farm that had to be sold before I was old enough to help my dad with it (with far-fetched hopes to buy back all the original land that was sold). I'll be damned if I don't try for my partner's sake. Who's family farm died with his grandparents, and all the rest of the kids and grandkids wanted nothing to do with agriculture. And I'll be damned if I don't try hard enough for the new blood that have no ties and have the same wild hair up their ass. To start from scratch is possible with enough will. And no I'm not well off by any means. Money helps tremendously, but I'm over here buying $100 broken equipment to fix up and pallets of bent used T posts because I can't afford anything nicer more often than not. So no. These words aren't coming from those people you see on YouTube and Facebook talking about how easy it is to get started and then show off their pristine homestead with a shiny new $50,000 tractor and $40,000 skid steer in the background. My words come from a place of true struggle and sacrifice for everything I have. It's possible. It's slow going and it's hard. But it's possible. Don't give up like everyone tells you to.

My venture started a few years ago with the family farm yard, handshake to hay 30 acres, a JD 500 I bought for $125, a 6ft mower, and a borrowed JD 4010 that only ran half the time.

Year by year, I try to add a couple things to make things easier. This year was upgrading the hayliner 68 to the JD T24 and finally getting a perfectly functional tractor that I personally owned that can run the round balers and the haybine. (The 560 I own is strictly for the rake and square balers). I'm also excited because I get to move the sheep out to a new grazing area I just shook hands on a couple days ago - best part is it's already fenced with really nice hard fence - it's an old horse pasture that hasn't been grazed in 15+ years. Just gotta walk the fence lines quick before I turn them out for the rest of summer.

I found this in the river:

Like these boys aren't small in the slightest. The tines on both of them are massive and the picture doesn't do them just. I mean, especially the guy on the left. I would have happily mounted him if I would have tagged him last fall. (And he was an OLD deer. His teeth are nearly completely ground down)

My guess was that they were fighting and ended up drowning last fall. Either fell through the ice or something. The only thing that would have made it cooler is if they were locked up. Who knows. Maybe they were and after some decay, the current got them separated. The bottom jaw of the deer on the left was snapped in half, not at the natural separation in the bone where they come apart, but snapped in half the other way. Like across the jaw. That would take some type of force to do that.

So I may not have brought home supper, but I have some cool skulls to add to the collection. These guys rival a dead head that took out a tractor tire that I have hung in my living room. He was the biggest deer I had on display until now. He has more tines, but both of these guys are bigger overall in spread and tine length.

During the worst of it, I was actually on my way to and from the state nursery picking up a load of trees for this season. (I spent roughly 12hrs on the road on Thursday in this stuff).

At one point, I was at a random gas station getting fuel and a guy stopped me, and thanked me for what I do. He must have read my shirt, which had the name of my district on it haha.

Moral of the story. If you own land - plant trees, quit ripping them out, try to practice no till if it's applicable, and plant native grasses at the very bare minimum. Please...

(pictures taken from friends posts and the highway department).

Have you ever had to haul a square baler you bought at auction shear on the other side of the state? That the width on was 89" across, but all you had was a trailer that was 82"?

Not our first time, probably not our last either 😅

We actually got lucky, the lights started working midway through the drive! We only had to stop once to rewire stuff on the side of the road!

I was doing chores at the winter pasture after work today, and I misplaced my drink. I was mad about it and figured I left it in the barn. I drive over to where my partner lives so we could go move some rounds off the hay field and bring them down to the winter yard. I asked him if I could run inside and grab something to drink quick and he was like "why? You have your drink right there?"

Yeah ... my half drank fountain pop rode all the way back there. Half of that drive was on gravel, the other half on paved highway and I hit a nasty frost boil on the way over too....I HAVE NO CLUE HOW IT STAYED.

(also I see that my phone autocorrected 'and' to 'as')

The funny part. I guess this is just a habit I have with this truck apparently because there was this instance not too long ago.

2011 GMC Sierra 1500 vs 2021 GMC Sierra 1500

Well. I broke down and bought a new truck this weekend. It's been coming, I've spent the last month picking out and researching a vehicle to replace my truck, and funny enough. The perfect match was just a newer version of what I already owned. (Except the new one is a diesel and my old one is a gas).

So I spent my entire weekend driving all over both North Dakota AND Minnesota looking at different variations of this truck. I was really hoping I wasn't going to end up with another white one, but I guess I'm just destined to always own a white truck.

My old truck, Monty, I've owned for 8 years as my daily driver. I have beaten the piss out of him. I've made that poor half ton do the work of a 1 ton more often than not and he's stayed a faithful work horse. So, he's finally going into retirement. At 300,000 miles, he's given me more than his all. He's not going anywhere, just being retired from daily driving and hauling. He's going to spend his days out being the fishing/camping truck. The new one can be the daily work horse.

Am I the only one that gets way too attached to my vehicles? It's bittersweet getting a new one. Not going to lie. I feel like I'm betraying an old friend...

This is probably one of the best feelings in the world. Granted, it was my 2nd try, not first this go around. I'll still take the win.

(I cuss like a sailor when I'm working by myself.)

I got a call from my mechanic this morning, and he was like "So good news! We got your power steering fixed, uh bad news - an ambulance clipped the back of your truck..."

I'm not mad, I actually laughed it off because it was like, really? Of all things to happen to my truck while it's getting worked on. Being hit by an ambulance wasn't remotely on my radar. With my mechanic's pause and 'uh bad news' comment. I was expecting him to tell me they had to replace the whole power steering pump or some other worse than we thought mechanical issue. Not that my truck was taken out by emergency services 😂

But the following day, the deer is gone off the side of the road and there's a ton of foot prints in the snow of where it was.

Needless to say. I'm relieved that someone else stopped to take the deer home. I don't have to feel like a good animal went to waste now.